Break Free
by Astaralis
Summary: When situations suddenly change for both Rachel and Puck they turn to each other for answers. I suck at summaries . Rated M for future holy whoa-ness.
1. I Want to Break Free

**AN: This is my first fan-fiction, EVER, so I would appreciate any and all comments and/or constructive criticism. In short, please read and review! I have more chapters planned, but I wanted to get a response to this before I went forward with it (shyness, you know how it goes).**

**Disclaimer: I do not own a single bit of Glee... except for the soundtrack that comes out in a week that I've pre-paid for. If I owned Glee, Puck and Rachel would have more than 1 episode!**

**

* * *

**The only lights inside the auditorium were the running lights that glowed lightly to illuminate the aisles. She liked it that way. In the dark with the barely-there glow from the running lights, she could pretend she wasn't at school, wasn't missing out on life, wasn't confused about what she wanted…she could think things through. She could stare into the black void and be empty for as long as she wanted. Or at least until the bell rang and her lunch period ended.

The darkness of the auditorium was broken by a slash of bright light and the chatter of the hallways broke through the silence before the light vanished and the noise ceased. In the darkness she could hear someone stumbling down the aisles towards the stage.

"Hello?" she called out into the darkness as she pulled herself into a standing position. Better to make whoever was there aware they were not alone – better to be standing in case they didn't appreciate her presence.

"Rachel?" a voice called, and she was simultaneously flooded with warmth and guilt. Every part of her ached for him and yet she could not, _could not_ have him.

"Finn?" she replied, her voice cracking as she felt her guilt flush through her and made her warm.

"I was looking for somewhere to go to be alone… I've had so much on my mind," he said as he moved down the aisle of the auditorium. "I remembered when you told me that this was one of your favorite places to go and think. I didn't think you'd be here now…" his voice trailed off as he began to climb the stairs to the stage.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asked, hoping that he would say yes, so that she could escape, and hoping that he would say no, so that she could be alone with him.

"It's okay, you can stay," he said, "it was your place first." She turned in the darkness and felt him walking closer to her. The running lights from the aisle didn't provide enough light to see anything on the stage clearly, and he walked into her, bumping his chest against hers.

Her skin tingled and she got goosebumps across her chest. "Stop it!" she thought to herself fiercely, as she heard Finn apologize and step back. She could tell he didn't step back more than an inch or two – his body was still close enough to radiate heat onto her own.

"What were you coming to think about?" she asked.

"Um…I guess I can tell you. I mean, in the dark, it's like you're not even here, you know? And it's like I'm talking to myself out loud, which I do a lot because it helps me think, you know?" he said. _Right, like I'm not here_, she thought. Perfect. Just how she wanted him to think about her.

"Sure…" she whispered, not letting go of her emotions. "Just lay down on your back on the stage and stare at the ceiling. That's what I do." She lay back down on the stage and hugged herself across her chest, hoping that what he was going to say wouldn't hurt her anymore than her love for him already had.

"I've just been kinda freakin' out, you know, about Quinn, and the baby, and how I almost left Glee, and how I'm not ready to be a dad, but I don't even get a say in whether or not I'm actually gonna be a dad. I mean, I'm gonna have a baby, but the baby won't even know she's mine. She won't know who I am. I won't get to teach her how to ride a bike, or scare teenage boys into making sure they bring her home on time… I won't get anything but the worry about Quinn and the heartache and the tears and the PAIN and sometimes I wonder if it's even worth it… I don't mean that. I know it's worth it. I have to be a good man. I have to be there for Quinn, even if I don't lo-" he cut himself off, falling abruptly into silence.

"What? What do you mean you don't love her? How could you say that, Finn? She's carrying your baby! She's given up everything – popularity, Cheerios, Celibacy Club… to be with you! To give birth to your child – hell, she even joined Glee to be with you!" Rachel couldn't believe she was defending Quinn, but she couldn't believe that Finn was thinking about this."I mean, you aren't thinking of leaving her, are you? Because that would be despicable behavior, Finn, and I, for one, expect much more mature behavior out of a boy who is about to become a father, even if it is in biology and name only!"

"No, no! I would never leave her! I can't believe you just jumped to that conclusion!" Finn jumped to his feet. "I stopped talking because my thoughts were getting mixed-up and I needed to figure them out, and… look, Rachel, I love Quinn. I know you and I have this whole messed-up thing, but I've _always_ loved Quinn. I have always wanted to take care of her, ever since she skinned her knee when she jumped off the swing in 2nd grade and fell down. When she started to cry, I wanted to give her a band-aid and tell her it would be okay, even though she had cooties…" he broke off with a laugh.

Rachel lay on the floor in silence. Hearing that he might not love Quinn had repulsed her but had given her a small glimmer of hope. Hearing him recount the moment he fell in love with Quinn had smashed that small glimmer of hope to pieces. She didn't know what to say, but she couldn't help but start talking. "So you're saying you've always loved her. That you would always want to take care of her, and that even though you and I have this 'messed-up thing' you would never leave her?" she tried to keep the hope out of her voice.

"Totally! I'm so glad you understand, Rachel, I felt so bad about sort-of lying to you about getting you back into Glee, and I do think you're a really cool girl and a great singer, but Quinn… she's the one for me." Feeling better about the situation, Finn lay back down on the ground.

Rachel didn't understand. Rachel couldn't grasp what was so great about Quinn Fabray that made Finn so devoted to her, that made Puck stare at her when he thought no one was looking. She was looking. She knew. She was looking at Finn – how could she not notice? She was so tired of staring and of losing that she wanted to play devil's advocate. She wanted to find out just how far out of his league she really was. That way, she could make a clean break. Or, she could keep holding onto her hope. Either way, she had to know.

"What if…" she racked her brains, thinking of the most ridiculous example she could come up with. "What if the baby wasn't yours? What if the baby was someone else's and Quinn had lied to you? Would you still love her and want to take care of her then? Or" she rolled onto her side and positioned her face just above Finn's so that she could feel his breath on her face, feel it speed up and feel the heat build between them as she lowered her mouth to his ear "would you be able" she stuttered, "would you be able to love _me_ then?"

There was a moment of silence and Rachel could feel herself magnetically pulled towards his mouth. Her heartbeat was racing, and just as she was lowering her mouth to meet his, the auditorium door slammed open, leaving Kurt illuminated in the doorway.

She jumped away from Finn as Kurt began running down the aisle, screaming Finn's name. "Finn! Finn! Ohmygod, thank GOD I've found you, you have to go right now! Quinn's got to go to the hospital, she's starting to bleed…" Kurt's voice began to trail off as he reached the stage and looked Finn in the eye as he continued "they aren't sure if she's miscarrying…"

Finn bolted off of the stage and raced up the aisle towards the door. As he ran he called back to Rachel, "Yes. Yes, I would. Because no matter what she did, it would mean that she chose me, and I would be lucky to be her choice. And to your second question. No. I wouldn't. Ever. Leave me alone. Leave her alone. All I care about is making sure that Quinn and our baby are okay!" With that, he ran out of the auditorium, leaving the door propped open behind him.

Kurt turned to Rachel in shock, his mouth gaping open. He started to speak, but Rachel cut him off at the pass. "Don't!" she cried, "don't say anything to anyone!" she ran up the aisle towards the door, sobbing while she ran.

"I won't," she heard as she ran from the room, leaving a bewildered Kurt standing alone, center stage.


	2. I Want to Break Free from Your Lies

"What do you _want_?" she hissed at him as she closed the door to the choir room and locked it behind her. "We are _not_ supposed to be talking about this at _all_ and all of a sudden you're leaving me a _NOTE? _In my _locker?_ Where Finn could find it? How dumb are you, Puckerman?"

Puck sighed. He knew Quinn would be pissed about the note, but he needed to talk to her, and she wouldn't return his phone calls and he was too afraid to go over to her house. She might kill him. At least at school, he could avoid death for a while. She wouldn't want that on her permanent record.

"I needed to talk to you. Obviously. That's what the note said; you can read, can't you MILF?" He knew that taunting her was not the best way to start off this conversation, but she pushed every single one of his goddamn buttons. She stalked towards him, raising her finger and opening her mouth as if she was going to start reading him the riot act, but Puck had had enough.

"Listen. I'm sorry. I just wanted to talk to you about our baby. I wanted to see if I could renegotiate with you now that everything has happened." He knew it was a long shot, but he had to try.

"Get it through your thick skull, you _Lima Loser_, there is no "our" baby. This is not up for discussion. There are no renegotiations. You. Are. Not. A. Part. Of. This." She spun on her heel and turned to go back towards the door. Furious, he stood up and grabbed her wrist.

"Wait just a fucking minute. I have been pretty cool about this whole thing, considering I was never given a choice in the matter. I agreed to your terms because I didn't want to fuck up your life anymore than I already had, but now that you're off the Cheerios and you've been slushied, everything you were trying to save is going down the drain. And I'm done! I'm done taking your bullshit!"

She was trying to pull her wrist out of his hand, but he kept his grip on her. He knew if he let go, he would never get another opportunity to tell her this.

"I want to be a part of my baby's life. I don't want to have to look at you and Finn everyday and know that he's playing the role of "Dad" to my little girl. I want to love my little girl and have her know who I am. I don't want to be a deadbeat dad like my father was, and walk away – I'm NOT that guy. I won't be that guy! I keep offering to help you and the baby, but you won't let me, Quinn. Please let me. Or at least tell me a legitimate reason why I can't, instead of that "Lima Loser" bullshit, because we both know it isn't true."

"Oh, so what now?" she was tugging her arm, trying to peel his fingers off her wrist. "You think that because you finally manned-up and did a solo for RuPaul that you've shown you have talent? That you'll amount to something? I meant what I said and I stand by it."

"No you don't!" he cut her off. "I saw the way you looked at me when I was singing, I see the way you sneak glances at me when you think no one's looking. How do you think that makes me feel?"

"I don't give a _shit_ how it makes you feel, Puckerman. Don't you get that? You don't get anything, do you? It's not about whether or not you would provide for me and the baby now – what happens if you change your mind? You never stick with anything! You can't even keep a relationship with the sappiest, clingiest girl of all time – how are you going to possibly stick around for a baby? Finn will stick around! He will be there! He's the one standing next to me in the halls, getting slushied with me. He's the one who will hold my hand when I finally have to tell my parents I'm pregnant. You are _nothing_ compared to that. What have you done for _anyone_ lately?"

It took every ounce of strength he had not to start screaming at the top of his lungs. He wanted to throw the chairs around the room, he wanted to rip apart the piano with his bare hands. "You're the one who doesn't get it, Quinn. I've taken care of my baby sister ever since my dad bailed on us when she was 2. I know what I'm doing. I've already raised a child. You don't know anything about me… and you don't care to. You came to me because you wanted to feel hot, and so you went to the hottest guy you knew – because that was the only way you could validate your own existence."

He was breathing hard now, and Quinn had stopped tugging at her arm. She was staring at him in shock. "Guess what, _gleek_? It takes 2 people to make a baby, and you lied – to Finn, and to me. You said you were on the pill. You only had 2 wine coolers, and I've seen you kill a bottle of Firefly before. Drunk? How's that excuse going to go over with Finn when he realizes the kid looks nothing like him? How about this – I was drunk. Certifiably so, and I have witnesses! People who will vouch for me, say it was a miracle I made it home, because I barely knew my own name. I was dating Santana at the time and you come into my house all flirty slutty in your Cheerios uniform and start touching me? How is a guy as drunk as I was supposed to know the difference between one Cheeri-Ho and the other? Who do you think Finn's going to believe? Huh? Me, or the skanky cheerleader?"

Quinn reeled back as if she'd been slapped. Lowering her eyes, she whispered, "How can you think we could possibly raise a baby together if this is the way we interact? I don't want to raise my daughter in an environment of anger and indignation. My parents fight all the time and it kills me… I won't do that to my daughter. That's why I'm choosing Finn. That's why I can't choose you." She was crying now, almost beginning to sob.

Puck dropped her arm and stepped back. "I always wanted to be a good father," he whispered back. Raising his eyes to meet hers, he continued in a more solid voice, "I won't have my daughter be raised to believe that lies will get her anywhere in life. If you don't tell Finn and your parents the truth, I will. I'm fighting for my little girl."

He walked past her and unlocked the door to the choir room. He picked up the guitar case that had been sitting by the door and began to walk out, using the guitar as a plausible excuse for being in the room. Behind him, he heard her gasp, sharp and loud. Hoping that she had changed her mind, he turned around.

Quinn was kneeling on the floor, hunched over so that her forehead was almost touching the tile. Her skin had gone a weird greenish-white, and her eyes were squeezed shut as she gasped again in pain. As Puck watched, she felt beneath her skirt and removed a hand sticky with bright red blood.

Puck dropped his guitar case inside the doorway and turned to look for anyone he knew. Mercedes, Tina, and Kurt were standing at Tina's locker just outside the room.

"Mercedes, call an ambulance! There's something wrong with the baby! Tina, go to the bathroom and get all the paper towels you can find. Kurt – find Finn. Now. Go!" His face was so intense and his voice so commanding that the 3 of them immediately responded to his orders.

After dispersing the 3 Glee members he ran to Quinn. "Quinn, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it. You'll be okay, the baby will be okay, you'll be okay, our little girl will be okay, you'll be okay" he was babbling and couldn't stop himself. All he wanted to do was reassure her.

Quinn was rocking and crying, staring at the blood on her fingers. He wasn't even sure she heard what he was saying until he said "our little girl." Those words snapped her out of her trance and she began to scream and claw at him, sobbing that he was killing her, that he had killed her, that he had killed her little girl.

He caught her flailing hands with his and pulled her into a tight embrace. She collapsed sobbing against him and he held her on the tile floor until Finn ran into the room and shoved him out of the way.

Puck slumped against the floor, staring at the 2 of them, praying silently for his baby girl as the EMT's arrived and loaded Quinn onto a stretcher. His eyes were locked on her as she was wheeled away, sobbing, until he couldn't see her anymore. Everyone followed her progress down the hallway, but his eyes were fixed, focused on the drops of blood that were bright and violent against the pale tile floor.


	3. You're So SelfSatisfied

**A/N: Thank-you all so much for the story alerts and the comments! I really appreciate them...it's nerve-wracking posting your first fic out there. BTW - All chapter titles are taken from "I Want to Break Free" by Queen. **

**Disclaimer: I still own nothing. Surprise, surprise.**

**

* * *

  
**

Tears were blurring her eyes as she stumbled down the hall. She could hear people gossiping amongst themselves, but for once, she absolutely _knew_ they weren't talking about her. She could hear bits and pieces of their conversations, "heard one of the EMT's say she would need a blood transfusion," "don't know if the baby's going to make it," and "heard she was alone when it happened. Where was Finn?"

Each time she heard his name mentioned in the snippets of conversation, it felt like a white-hot knife stabbing through her flesh. She knew that she had no right to focus on her own personal pain at the moment, she couldn't be selfish, but after everything he had said to her, after each kiss they'd shared, after every moment of electricity and locked eyes… how could she not allow herself to feel the pain he had just inflicted upon her?

She was heading for the bathroom, head down, eyes streaming, when she heard part of a conversation that made her stop and turn around. Almost psychotically she approached a girl standing at her locker and demanded, "What did you just say?"

The girl looked at Rachel and noticed that she looked completely deranged – her hair was disheveled with what looked like dust and…electrical tape? in it, her makeup was in deep raccoon circles under her eyes and tears had made track marks down her face. With her wide bloodshot eyes boring into the girl, Rachel asked again, louder, "What did you just say?!"

"Y-you mean about Quinn Fabray?" the girl stuttered.

"Of course I mean about Quinn Fabray you twit, now repeat it!" Rachel was close to snapping, and the girl she was interrogating looked like she was choking on the words. Rachel wondered if she smacked her on the top of the head, the answer would finally pop out of her mouth. Fortunately, the girl began to speak.

"I heard that Quinn was in the choir room when it happened, and that if Puck hadn't gone in there to get his guitar right then, she would have lost the baby for sure. He's the one who fou-" the girl stopped talking, because Rachel had already whirled away from her and was speeding down the hall.

_I can't believe he was the one who found her_, Rachel thought to herself. She had known from his stares during Glee practice that Noah had a crush on Quinn. He had practically confirmed it himself when she broke up with him on the bleachers 2 weeks ago. He was too proud to actually say the words out loud, but Rachel could tell that he had deep feelings for her. She knew it must have affected him profoundly to be the one who found her like that, and to want to take care of her and to have to send for…_Don't think his name, don't think his name…_

She rounded the corner and approached the door to the choir room. Principal Figgins was in the room, as was Mr. Schuester and Coach Sylvester. They were all standing in front of Noah, who was sitting on the floor, a look of shock and anxiety on his face. Just outside the doorway, Matt, Mike, Tina, Artie, Mercedes, Santana, and Brittany were clustered, holding hands and whispering. Rachel could hear Kurt running to catch up behind her. As she and Kurt joined the group of Glee kids standing outside the door, they shared a look – she communicated _Do not mention what you saw or I will cut up all of your designer clothing_ and he replied with _As if I would ever say anything (please stay away from my clothes!). _

The students hovered in the doorway until Mr. Schuester and Coach Sylvester walked out. "Santana! Brittany! Over here!" Coach Sylvester commanded, and led the girls away. Rubbing his temples, Mr. Schue approached the remaining Glee kids.

"Obviously, practice is cancelled today, guys. As you all know, they had to take Quinn to the hospital. She may be miscarrying… but they don't know for sure. Finn is with her, and because she's a minor, her parents are being notified."

The group sucked in a collective gasp at this news – they knew Quinn had yet to tell her family about the baby (neither had Finn) but Quinn's parents were hardcore Christians, and would not take this news well under normal circumstances, much less hospitalized circumstances.

"She's going to need our support with this, and so is Finn, no matter what happens with the baby. I'm sure you all will be there for the both of them, despite any differences you may feel personally about either one of them. They are your teammates, and deserve our love and support during their time of need. Now, I can't give you permission to leave school grounds without a pass from your parents, but I can tell you that they've taken her to Lima Regional Hospital, and that if there are any updates, you need to call my cell phone. I'll be there as soon as school is over…" Rubbing his eyes, Mr. Schuester walked away down the hall. As he did, chatter broke out amongst the remaining members of the group.

"Well, I say we take the car that's the biggest. Kurt, did you ever fix that window I busted?" Mercedes asked.

"No, my dad took it away after he found my Hope chest, remember?" Kurt responded. "Who else has cars?"

As the group made travel plans, Rachel stared into the room, where Noah was still being interrogated by Principal Figgins. He looked awful; like he was about to snap and start screaming and throwing things at any second.

"Rachel!" She snapped her eyes away from Noah and back to the group.

"Who do you want to ride with? Mike or Tina?" Kurt asked exasperatedly.

"Oh, um…I'll wait for Puck and I'll bring him in my car later" she replied. She knew he would want to go for Quinn, but might not be able to do it himself after what he had witnessed this afternoon.

"O-okay," Kurt replied, his eyebrow raised inquisitively. Thankfully, he took the focus off of Rachel and began directing the rest of the Glee members down the hallway. She watched them turn the corner, holding hands and talking worriedly about the golden couple, Finn and Quinn. A fresh knife of pain sliced into her - _don't think his name!_

She slumped against the wall outside the choir room and stared at her hands, waiting for Principal Figgins to leave the room. When he finally appeared in the doorway, he noticed Rachel sitting on the floor in the hallway when she was supposed to be in class and opened his mouth to tell her to move along. Instead, he shut his mouth and turned away, walking quickly down the hallway.

Rachel stood up and walked into the room, pausing by the doorway. Noah's guitar case had been shunted to the side of the doorframe and had dust and scuff marks on it. She picked it up and dusted it off, setting it right-side-up. She continued across the floor to where Noah was sitting, and as she did, she noticed the spots of blood that dotted the floor. She shuddered and looked away. Noah was staring at them.

He didn't seem to hear or notice her as she approached him. When she sat down next to him, he continued to stare at the drops of blood on tile. Rachel, surprisingly, didn't say anything, but sat next to him in silence. For a while no one moved, Noah staring at the blood, Rachel staring at her hands.

His breathing hitched and she looked up at him – tears were rolling silently down his face. She turned to him and gathered him into her arms, not saying anything, just letting him cry. She knew he would hate himself for being weak in front of her, but she knew he needed to get it out.

His crying became more violent as sobs ripped through his body and his breath caught in his throat. Snot was dripping out of his nose and tears were running down his face and into his mouth, but still he didn't move; didn't speak. Rachel pulled a packet of tissues from her sweater pocket and began to wipe his nose and mop up his tears. When she was done she put her arms around him again, and he finally took his eyes off of the blood spots and let his head hang down.

She leaned her head towards his and hugged him tighter and then pulled his face back towards her so that she could dry it again. As she patted his face with her tissue, she was shocked to see that it looked as if something had died inside of him – his eyes were anguish-filled and yet empty at the same time.

"Oh, Noah," she whispered, drying his face and holding him.

He looked at her clearly for the first time when she said his name, the name that only his mother and sister called him. The name that no one outside his family had ever used, until Rachel. She saw the anguish in his eyes, the pain that twisted his features, and when he opened his mouth, she was afraid that she would hear from Puck, and not from Noah.

"It's my fault," he whispered to her, his voice hollow and cracking, "it's all my fault," he repeated, and then succumbed to violent sobs once more.


	4. Yeah, I Don't Need You

**A/N: So glad you guys like it! Please keep reviewing...it keeps me motivated.**

**Disclaimer: What, me own something? Nah...**

**

* * *

  
**

"Noah…" Rachel began. "It couldn't have been your fault. You didn't do anything to cause this – if anything, you're a hero. You found her. You may have saved her life. You may have saved the baby's life…" she trailed off as he sobbed harder, burying his face into her shoulder.

Noah knew that she was only trying to comfort him, and part of him warmly recognized the fact that it was Rachel who had stayed, Rachel who was holding him, Rachel who wanted to be there for him. But it was only a tiny, infinitesimal part of him. The rest of him felt like he was enduring excruciating agony – being ripped apart, limb from limb. His heart felt like it had been torn from his chest and his throat was choking with sobs. _Quinn…his baby…_

Pain ripped through him and his brain seemed to overload from the memories of seeing Quinn curled on the floor, reaching under her skirt to find that she was bleeding. He had done that to her. All of it. That the Quinn in his memory was wearing a jean skirt, not a Cheerio skirt was one of the sharpest reminders that he had caused this – he had caused her to lose everything. If only, if only…_please, if only_, if only she wouldn't lose the baby.

He had been bargaining with God ever since he had turned around after he heard her gasp. While he was yelling directions at the Glee clubbers, while he was racing towards her, while he was holding her while she was fighting him… She knew. She had screamed at him, "_You killed my little girl!"_ Even when he could be losing the most important thing in his life, she had still refused to acknowledge his rights, his love – it was not his little girl, it was _hers_ and that hurt almost as much as knowing he had caused all of this. It made him sick.

Nauseous, he pushed himself away from Rachel, who leaned back, startled. He stood up and ran for the trash can and knelt before it. He threw up everything he had in his stomach, his breakfast, his lunch, the black bile that was choking him, reminding him that he was evil, that _he had caused this_. He was dry-heaving now, he had nothing left inside him to give up. He curled up on the floor next to the trash can and began crying anew.

He registered that Rachel had stood up and crossed the room to the doorway. He didn't want her to see him like this, didn't want her to use it against him (although part of him knew she wouldn't) but he didn't want her to leave.

"Please," he began to whisper, but he stopped as Rachel simply pulled the door closed and locked it.

"I didn't think you would want anyone to see you like this," she said, and he was instantly grateful to her. He couldn't believe that he was losing control of everything in his life and the person who was supporting him and taking care of him was _Rachel Berry_. She had dumped him and he had scorned her, almost going back to his old ways of slushie-days and ridicule, but still… she was here, hiding him, holding him, reassuring him. He realized she had begun speaking again, but he had no idea what she was saying. It didn't make any sense.

"What?" he asked, feeling stupid for zoning out.

"It's not your fault, Noah. I wish you could see that. It's really not your fault. I can't believe Quinn was in here alone, but thank God you had left your guitar in here and had come to get it. Mercedes said she had never seen a man leap into action so quickly – she said you were so forceful it was scary. You did the best thing for her, and the baby, that you could ever do, Noah, don't you see that? By acting so quickly, you may have saved both of their lives. You'll be a hero to her now…" she stopped talking because he had taken-in what she was saying and was laughing bitterly on the floor.

Pulling himself upright, he said, "Rachel, that's not true. I did this. I caused this. I'm not the hero. I will never be a hero to Quinn Fabray. I'm a Lima Loser, just like she said I was. I'm a Lima Loser…"

"Noah! That's not true! Stop saying that, I don't understand how you can think that – you did all of the right things, not the wrong things – STOP LAUGHING!" she was frustrated with him and didn't understand what was going on, but she stopped speaking when he got to his feet. Whereas his eyes had been pain-filled and empty before, they were now burning with his intense hatred for himself. They had almost blacked themselves out and she was suddenly frightened of him.

"No. You stop, Rachel. It's funny because it's true. She said I was a loser, that I couldn't do anything right, that I didn't deserve her, or the baby, and she was right – look what I did!" Rachel was staring at him, absolute bewilderment on her face.

"But…wha…?" she asked, speechless.

"I'll let you in on a secret, Berry, one that only 2 people know – me and Quinn. One of Finn's first nights in Glee, there was a party at Josh Ackerman's house. Finn was rehearsing with you guys and I was at the party. I had some stupid fucking fight with Santana and had decided to get absolutely bombed on Jaeger-bombs and tequila. I got so fucking wasted that, according to a few football guys, Mike and Matt included, I didn't even know my own name. I had to walk home – thankfully it was only 3 blocks."

He took a deep breath and looked up at her. She was staring at him, eyes wide open, mouth agape. Closing his eyes, he continued.

"I was in the living room, passed out on the sofa. My mom and sister had gone to my grandmother's for the weekend, so I was alone in the house. I woke up, still wasted, and was making out with Santana – I have no idea how she got in, the front door must have been left unlocked - and it was good. It was so damn good that because we were alone, we decided to fuck. She told me she was on the pill, and so I didn't have to stumble up the stairs to get a condom out of my room. We fucked, and when we finished, I passed out again from drunkenness and exhaustion."

He opened his eyes again so that he could stare straight at her. He could tell by the look of horror on her face that she knew what was coming next, but he had to say it anyway. Without breaking his eye contact with her he whispered, "When I woke up the next morning, I had to reach over Santana to get the trash can so that I could hurl. But before I could get to the trash can, I realized that the girl next to me on the sofa wasn't dark-haired and olive-skinned. She was blonde and fair-skinned. She wasn't Santana. She was Quinn."

Rachel let out a gasp of outrage and shock. Quickly, she shut her mouth, and he took that as his sign to continue. "I ran to the bathroom and was sick all over the place. Not just because I had a hangover. But because I had broken the cardinal rule of male friendship – don't have sex with your best friend's girlfriend – and I hadn't even realized it. I had never meant to do it. I had never realized that I was doing it."

He paused to breathe. "When I came out of the bathroom, Quinn was gone. There was a note in her place that said, "Don't tell anyone. You got me drunk. I was a virgin." I checked with Matt, Mike, Santana, and Brittany the next day – Quinn left the party 2 hours after I did, and all she had drunk were 2 wine coolers – which have minimal alcohol in them. She never mentioned it again. And then…" he trailed off, lost in thought.

"And then Quinn told Finn she was pregnant," Rachel whispered, "and Finn told you."

"And Finn told me. And I tried to man up. She had convinced me not to say anything to Finn because she would lie (again) and I would lose my best friend for something I didn't even know had happened. But I didn't want Finn to have to be a teenage dad. I didn't want to abandon my child. I tried to tell her that, but she ignored me, called me a Lima Loser and told me to stay out of her way."

He wasn't sure if he could go on, if he could tell the next part of his story without absolutely losing control, without making Rachel hate him completely. But she had to see. She had to understand.

"I went along with it, for a while. But I couldn't handle it after a little while, so I began to try to renegotiate the terms of _her_ agreement. She wouldn't let me contact her – I'd call her cell phone, her house. I'd try to corner her after Glee or at school – I couldn't go to her house, not without risking telling her parents. So today I put a note in her locker. I told her to meet me in Glee room during lunch to talk about our baby. I signed my name…"

Noah told her what had happened when Quinn had come into the room. He told Rachel everything, and as he relived it while he laid it out for her, he became more and more heartbroken, more and more convinced that it was truly his fault. When he finished, he slumped to the floor and put his head in his hands.

"Noah." Rachel said his name, not in a whisper, not in a plea, not in a comforting balm. "Noah. I stand by what I said originally – it's not your fault. None of it is. You didn't intentionally have sex with Quinn. You didn't intentionally impregnate her. Even so, you tried to stand up for your rights as a father. You tried to stand up for your child. You cannot control what she does – and there is no way to predict what will happen to a baby. There is no way that holding onto her wrist did anything to affect your baby. Your…little girl."

He hadn't realized that she knew he was having a girl. Hearing her say it made the possibility seem more real. Having her hold him made him feel more assured of himself. Was he devastated after witnessing the mother of his unborn-child potentially miscarry their baby? Yes. Was he at fault? _No._ He could honestly answer that question with a no. He had more questions though…

"What do I do now, Rachel, what do I do? If I go to the hospital, I can't claim paternity in front of Finn and ruin his life. I can't do that to Quinn in the state that she's in, especially with their parents coming. But I have to know my baby's okay. I have to know that she'll be okay. I want to be a father."

Rachel's eyes flooded with concern, and as she knelt in front of him, he knew something outside of all of this had happened to her. Before he could ask her what was wrong, she took his hand and pulled him to his feet.

"So you'll be a father. We'll go to the hospital (he felt a small shudder pass through her when she said it) and see what the situation is. But when the time comes, we'll get you a lawyer. And then, when she tries to pull any of her bullshit, you can say, "I don't need you," and you can be with your little girl. Say it."

"I don't need you." Just saying the words aloud in the room where this all had started made him feel a bit more confident in his future.

"Now c'mon," Rachel said, and took him by the hand. Her warm little hand in his large one made him feel warm and protected (odd thing to be thinking of a little bit like her as a protector) and together they crossed to the door.

"Oh," she said, "and we're taking my car."


	5. God Knows I Want to Break Free

**A/N: Sorry it's all so angsty - good stuff coming soon!**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Sigh.**

* * *

On the surface she was calm, collected. She was putting on an act for Noah Puckerman. Beneath her calm exterior she was boiling and raging because she couldn't believe that Noah held himself responsible for this; couldn't believe that Quinn had tricked everyone into believing her lies, and (further in the back of her mind) was the hurt that now even though she knew that Finn wasn't the father of Quinn's baby, he would never leave Quinn. He would never love Rachel; that much had been obvious as he'd run from the room.

She was walking down the hall with Noah Puckerman's hand in hers. She was guiding him towards the parking lot so that they could go to the hospital together to check on Quinn, the baby, and _!!!!_ she sucked a breath in through her teeth and involuntarily winced with pain at the thought of his name.

"Rach? What is it?" Noah stopped in the middle of the hallway. "What's wrong?"

She didn't want to worry him; she didn't want to put her silly little heartbreak up next to his pain. They didn't compare. She was learning to put others first.

"Nothing," she replied and they walked to the car in silence.

The whole drive to the hospital Rachel tapped her foot against the floorboard or drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. As soon as she had gotten into the car she had pressed the power button on her stereo (the first time since she had gotten the car) and turned the music off. Music was too much to bear right now – it would do nothing to siphon her pain or Noah's.

When they pulled into the hospital parking lot, Noah had a moment of panic.

"What do I say? How do I act? What do I do?" words and worries were flooding his mind and he was beginning to babble like Rachel. She heard him cut himself off, and she replied, "Just be normal. Just act normal. Don't let on like you had anything to do with this." Together they marched towards the door.

The emergency room waiting area was packed with people she knew – all of the Glee clubbers, Quinn's parents, Finn's mom, even Terri Schuester, she saw. _Mr. Schue must have asked her to come and keep him updated_, she thought, _nice of her_. _Weird how concerned she looks, though. _Shaking off the odd thought she and Noah approached the group of Glee kids anxiously.

"Any news?" she asked the group. All of the faces bore the same response. No news, but they were holding out hope. The longer they went without news, the more their hope diminished.

"Her parents showed up about 30 minutes after we got here," Kurt whispered conspiratorially. "They haven't talked to anyone except the doctor. Mr. Fabray shot a death glare at Mrs. Hudson when she got here, and Mrs. Fabray burst into tears when she saw her, so Mrs. Hudson has been alienated from everyone else in that corner."

"Yeah, and Mr. Schue's crazy drug-dealing wife came hurtling into the waiting room like it was her daughter in there, asking questions and being weird," continued Mercedes. "We're not really sure why she's here. She hasn't even called Mr. Schue to update him or anything. When we called him 10 minutes ago, he didn't even know she was here."

_Odd_, thought Rachel, but now was not the time to focus on that. As the rest of the group shared all of their news and began to run out of things to say, she noticed that Brittany and Santana were stealing glances at Noah and then looking down at the ground. Artie was looking up at him, a concerned expression on his face. Tina, behind Artie, was wringing her hands and staring at him. Rachel knew what was coming, but she couldn't warn him.

"So, Puck, man, what happened?" asked Mike.

Noah froze, the expression on his face twisting, his eyes filling with pain. He looked like he was about to snarl out a response when Rachel covered his hand with hers and gently squeezed it.

"I had left my guitar in there this morning after our jam session," he explained, looking at Artie, "and I had to go back in there to get it before lunch, because I wanted to work on a new arrangement for a song…" his voice trailed off. Rachel could tell he didn't know how to proceed – he didn't want to lie anymore.

"And then he found Quinn and you all know what happened. Kurt, Tina, Mercedes, you were all there. I don't think we should make Puck relive this right now, it was obviously very traumatic and we don't know if he's suffering from any type of post-traumatic stress disorder, or even shock, which can do funny things to your system. In fact, I should have thought of that already, Puck, you probably need to sit down. And drink some water. And eat something. Because we don't want your body going into shock, we can't have you fainting in the waiting room…" Rachel continued to speak at high-speed and Noah squeezed her hand back, silently thanking her for the distraction.

The door to the emergency room opened and everyone tensed, their breaths held in a collective silence. Rachel felt Noah squeeze her hand, almost crushing her fingers. She squeezed back, trying to silently tell him that everything would be okay, even if it was not okay.

They watched as the doctor gathered the Fabrays and Mrs. Hudson together and began to speak to them quietly. As he spoke, Mrs. Hudson sagged into a chair and Mrs. Fabray buried her face in her husband's shoulder, with quiet tears running down her face. Mr. Fabray's face had hardened into a mask of determination. No one could tell what was going on. None of the glee kids moved.

The doctor walked back into the ER without even sparing a glance for the rest of the entourage waiting in the room. Fed up with the lack of information, Rachel pulled Noah along with her as she moved towards Mrs. Hudson.

"Mrs. Hudson? Hi, I'm Rachel Berry, with glee, and…" she stopped speaking when Mrs. Hudson looked up.

"Oh, Rachel…yes, Finn's mentioned you. And Puck! Oh, Puck, I'm so happy you're here! Finn will need your support so much…" she trailed off, lost in thought.

Rachel could feel that Noah's grip on her hand was getting deathly tight – he needed answers, but he didn't know how to ask.

"Mrs. Hudson, is…is the baby okay? Did they save the baby?" she whispered. She heard all conversation stop around her, everyone was waiting for the answer to this question.

"Quinn will have to be on bed rest for a while, no more Cheerios, but… but they saved her. They saved my granddaughter." She burst into a watery smile, and around her the room erupted in a cheer.

Rachel felt the pressure on her hand lessen and then disappear entirely. When she turned around, all she could see was a mohawked head moving quickly toward the exit. "Excuse me," she apologized to Mrs. Hudson, and raced after him.

She found him outside on a bench with his head in his hands. She could hear his breath coming in quick, shaky gasps, and knew that he was trying to keep it together in front of everyone they knew.

"She's okay," Rachel whispered as she approached him. "She's going to be okay." She placed her hand on his shoulder and was surprised when he jerked away as if she had burned him.

"Yeah, _she's okay_. Mrs. Hudson's _granddaughter_ is going to be okay. What the fuck, Rachel? Yeah, I could get a lawyer, but how do I do that to her? Not to Quinn, not to Finn, but to her? She helped raise me when my dad walked out, and I've seen how losing her husband and losing Darryl affected her. How can I take away her grandchild?"

"You don't have to take her away from them – you just have to share her with them," Rachel replied, shaken from the angry Puck she was encountering.

"Leave me alone, Berry. Leave me the fuck alone. Take your "no place like home" goody-two-shoes act and serve it to someone who cares." He stood up and walked away from her, never looking back.

Rachel felt like she had been slapped. What happened to the Noah who had cried in her arms with snot dripping down his face? What had happened to the Noah who was going to fight for his daughter? Reeling, she walked back inside the waiting room and slumped into a chair.

The Fabrays and Mrs. Hudson went to see Finn and Quinn and the rest of the group waited in the lobby. After the adults left, Santana, Brittany, Mike, and Matt went in to see them. After they had taken their turns, Mercedes, Tina, Kurt, and Artie went in next, wishing the couple their congratulations and support.

Rachel was still in the chair she had occupied after her run-in with Puck. She was the only one who had noticed Mrs. Schuester quietly slip out of the waiting room and never return. School was still in session, so Mr. Schuester hadn't arrived yet. When Mercedes, Tina, Kurt, and Artie came out, she curled into her chair in the corner of the lobby, pretending not to notice them. They didn't notice her.

Neither did Puck when he came back into the waiting room and approached the desk. "I'd like to see Quinn Fabray," he said to the desk agent.

"Let me check the admittance sheet," the woman replied. "Your name?"

"Noah Puckerman," he replied, agitatedly tapping his shoe on the floor.

"Sir, I apologize, but I'm not able to give you entrance. You're on Ms. Fabray's denied access list."

"What? How could that be?" Rachel saw the anger swell inside of him, and before she could stop herself she was across the lobby and standing at the counter.

"Stop it, Puck," she said forcefully. "Go sit in a chair. I'll go talk to Finn and Quinn and sort this out. You stay here. Say nothing to anyone, not even Finn, no matter what, okay?" She stared forcefully into his eyes until he walked away to sit in a chair.

"Rachel Berry," she said to the desk clerk, who promptly gave her a guest pass and told her than Quinn was in room 317.

Rachel sucked in her stomach and tightened her resolve as she got on the elevator to go to the 3rd floor. She knew she was about to see Finn, and that hurt, but she kept Noah's pained expression and his confession fresh in her mind, and that gave her the strength to go forward. Reaching out, she paused, took one more deep breath, and knocked on the door.

"Rachel." Finn said her name like it was a malediction. He was as happy to see her as she was to see him.

"Finn," she replied in the same tone as she entered the room. Turning back to look at him, she noticed that he looked as if he had aged 10 years since their encounter on the stage. Surprisingly, she found herself caring very little.

"Puck is in the lobby waiting for you. I think he feels nervous about coming up here since the last time he saw Quinn, she was…you know…" she trailed off before finding her courage again. "Why don't you go talk to him and convince him it's okay to see her, and I'll stay with Quinn for a minute?"

She didn't give him a choice as she pushed him towards the hallway and shut the door behind him. She turned towards Quinn, who was tucked into a hospital bed. She had tubes sticking out of her arms and she was staring at what Rachel assumed was the fetal heart-rate monitor, watching each line as it blipped across the screen.

Quinn was a mess; her hair was greasy and lank and stuck to her head. She was sweaty and careworn, and above everything else, she looked _tired_. Not sleepy, but physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted. Rachel felt a small moment of pity for her, but brought Noah's blazing look and tear-filled eyes to her mind to give her strength.

_Perform_ she encouraged herself before opening her mouth to speak.

"Quinn, I know that now is not the best time, but we need to talk," she began, crossing the room to stand in front of the hospital bed. Quinn turned towards her and stared at her vacantly.

"I know that Finn isn't the father of your baby," Rachel said, and Quinn's vacant expression became one of total fear.


	6. I've Fallen in Love

**A/N: I absolutely love how many people have added this to favorites and story alerts, but I would really love some reviews, so that I can know where you hope I go with this - how you feel about the characters, what you think they should do, what you feel they would want. I know what I want out of Puck and Rachel, but I don't know if I'm alone in those thoughts... so let me know! **

**Disclaimer: Alas, poor Puck, I knew him well. Sadly, he is not mine. God, I miss Glee.**

**

* * *

  
**

Puck collapsed into the chair that Rachel had intimidated him into. After he had snapped at her and walked away, he had walked around the hospital perimeter, through the parking annexes, up-and-down each level of the parking garage they had parked in, and once more again around the building. He knew it wasn't right to snap at Rachel like that, but the way she kept trying to act like everything was fine, that he was in the right… he wasn't sure he _was_ in the right, and that's what bothered him.

Maybe if he had just told Finn the truth when he had found the note from Quinn, he could have done something about this then. Maybe if he had told Finn the truth when Finn told him that Quinn was pregnant…maybe then he would have the right to claim himself as the father. But he had hidden the truth, which was just as bad as lying. He had led his best friend to believe that he was going to be a teenage father.

It wasn't so bad before the parents got involved. Hell, it wouldn't be so bad if it was just Quinn's parents involved. But whenever Puck had gotten in trouble and had run away to Finn's house, Mrs. Hudson had always taken care of him. When his sister had gotten sick and Puck was home alone with her and his mom was at work, he had taken her to the Hudson house, and Mrs. Hudson had taught him how to take care of her. How could he strip her of something, _someone_, she so obviously loved? How could he do that?

But how could he not – how could he give up his baby girl? From the moment Finn had unknowingly told him he was going to be a father, he had felt a protective love for his unborn child. When Finn had shared the news that he was going to be the father of a beautiful little girl, he had had to leave the room to keep from crying. When Finn had asked him what was wrong, he had had to act all macho and be like, "Dude, you had fuckin' tears in your eyes. Man-up, Finn."

But the truth was that he was in love with his little girl, his unborn daughter. He had started thinking of things to teach her, like how to throw a football, and how to defend herself against boys. How to duck when a slushie was thrown towards her. How to be cool _and_ a nice person, so that she didn't end up like her mom or dad.

He had started thinking of names, too. Names that he knew his mother would love, because even though the baby wouldn't be Jewish by blood, she could still be raised in the Jewish faith and have a Jewish name. Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Sascha… his baby girl deserved a beautiful name. She deserved the best of everything… but how was he going to give that to her?

Puck was so lost in thought that he didn't see Finn step out of the elevator or walk towards him. He didn't notice the frankenteen standing above him with a stony look on his face. He only noticed Finn's presence when the lanky motherfucker folded himself into the chair next to him.

"Dude," Finn said.

"'Sup, man?" Puck queried, not entirely sure how to progress with this conversation. Rachel had told him not to say anything to anyone, _not even Finn_, and now he understood that Rachel had planned to get Finn out of the room so that she could talk to Quinn. A swell of gratitude welled-up in him, and guilt crashed over him as he realized what a bastard he had been to her – _again_.

"Man, Rachel Berry just kicked me out of my own hospital room to talk to Quinn, who she hates. I don't get it, man, but it makes me nervous." Finn was jostling his leg up and down, and the perplexed look on his face made Puck want to laugh out loud.

"Why are you so nervous, man? You know Rachel probably just wants to apologize to Quinn in private, or whatever, so that no one knows it actually happened…" Puck trailed off. Why would Rachel going to talk to Quinn make _Finn_ nervous? Finn was not a part of this secret. What did he have to be nervous about?

"Uh, well…uh… I kinda freaked out this afternoon? So I went to the auditorium to, you know, organize my thoughts, right?" At this, Puck chuckled inwardly. Finn needed to organize his thoughts? What, all 3 of them?

"Rachel was in there, man," Finn continued, and Puck sat up a little straighter. He had an idea that he was about to find out why Rachel had looked so weird and had been so quiet this afternoon.

"And so we were talking, and I had paused mid-thought and she thought I was going to say I didn't love _Quinn_ when I was going to say that I didn't love the idea of giving our baby up for adoption. And she like, totally spazzed out on me, which was weird, because she was defending Quinn, saying I couldn't leave her, not with the baby…" Finn trailed off, his mouth hanging open and his glazed eyes stared into the distance.

"Finn? Hello? Continue?" Puck snapped Finn back to reality. Seriously? What the fuck was his problem?

"And so I kind of yelled at her and defended myself saying I'd _always_ want to be with Quinn. And then Rachel asked me this really weird question, about how would I stay with Quinn even if the baby wasn't mine, and then Kurt ran in and told me about Quinn and then I left…"

When Puck heard Finn recall Rachel's question, he felt himself go rigid. He couldn't believe that Rachel would even think to ask that (because how could she have known? He didn't tell her until later, and Quinn certainly wouldn't have told Rachel Berry anything), and he was dying to know Finn's response.

"So what did you tell her, man? Did you even respond?" he asked, his nerves on edge.

"Oh, yeah…. I told her that I would never love her and to leave me and Quinn alone." _What the fuck? _thought Puck. That makes no sense whatsoever in terms of the question she asked him. Is Finn really that dumb?

"Um, dude? What did you tell her about Quinn and the baby?" Puck asked again.

"Oh. Well, I told her the truth. That if the baby wasn't mine, that I would still be with Quinn and want to take care of her and the baby, because, let's face it, if she chose me over whatever dumbass guy actually managed to knock her up and walk away… I would be lucky. I would be lucky she chose me." Finn was still talking, but Puck had closed him off. His face had shut down at Finn's words and he was fighting to control his anger. _This is what Rachel meant. Don't talk to Finn. Don't talk to anybody. Don't blow it._

He reeled himself in and tried to redirect the subject. "So…why did you even have to tell her that you wouldn't love her, dude?" _Rachel… that's why she was so hurt all day! But she came here…for me. To support me._

"Well because she went all psycho-stalkery on me, man!"

"Yeah, but you led her on, you know."

"Oh, whatever man, those kisses don't count and that date didn't mean anything because I was trying to get her back in glee. And it worked, didn't it? Led her on, my ass."

The rage that he had been controlling about Finn's comments about Quinn's baby-daddy bubbled to the surface, and he was having trouble keeping it under control. Sure, when he had started making out with Rachel it was just because she was a hot Jew, but it had turned into something different. When she had broken up with him, he had known it was because she had feelings for Finn. Now he knew why she didn't see it working out. Because Finn kept teasing her, kept leading her on, tugging on the leash that said, "maybe someday," but someday would never come.

"You _kissed_ her? While you have a pregnant girlfriend?" Puck spat at him. Finn finally stopped yammering about "leads" and looked at Puck's face.

"Why do you even _care_, Puck? What difference does it make. She's _Rachel fucking Berry_. Only known as a good singer, a crazy girl, and the perfect slushie targe-" Finn cut off because Puck had grabbed his shirt collar and pulled Finn towards him.

"What the hell, man?" Finn queried.

"Rachel Berry deserves better than that. You were the one to tell me that when I joined glee. You said no more slushie facials. You said that these glee kids were cool. You can't be such a fucking hypocrite, man. You _did_ lead her on, everyone could see it. She's absolutely gaga over you, and you string her along so you can use her when you need her, and hurt her when you don't. It's despicable. You disgust me." Puck shoved Finn away from him and settled back into his chair.

"Puck…what's up with you? You're all weird and broody and then you defend Rachel Berry? That's not your style man? What's changed with you?"

Puck thought about how to answer that question – he could be honest and talk to him about the baby and about Rachel and Quinn and everything, or… he could do as Rachel asked and stay quiet. Still he had to give him an answer. It didn't have to be clear, just an answer... "I fell in love, man."

With _who_? With Rachel Berry? Because you can't do that, man, she's off limits…" again Finn kept talking, but Puck tuned him out. Let Finn make ridiculous assumptions, he thought. Although this assumption might not be quite as ridiculous as Finn thought it to be – Rachel had been the one to stay for him, hadn't she? And to hold him and take care of him and drive him here and hold his hands and take his shit and still defend him… and to call him Noah. It drove him crazy when she did that…

He was still thinking about her when the agent at the desk called his name.

"Noah Puckerman?" she called.

"Yes ma'am," he stood up.

"Ms. Fabray has added you to her list of accepted visitors. She asks that you come up right away, but that Mr. Hudson get some food and wait to come up until he's called."

Puck turned around and smirked at Finn, who was sitting in the chair looking dumbstruck. Granted, he looked that way most of the time, but in this instance it was particularly vindicating. He turned around and walked towards the elevator, amazed that Rachel had convinced Quinn to let this happen. She sure was amazing… he thought as the elevator doors slid closed in front of him.


	7. I've Fallen in Love for the First Time

**A/N: This chapter was really hard to write - it felt a little forced. I don't want Rachel and Puck to get into anything too quickly, but I want the seed to be there. I hope it works. Let me know what you think!**

**Disclaimer: I would so love to own this. **

**

* * *

**"I know that Finn isn't the father of your baby." The words rang through the room, laying an ominous silence over the two girls. For a moment, only the machines made noise, humming and emitting blips and beeps as Quinn's heart rate sped up. Quinn gasped and then turned her head back towards the heart rate monitors, forcing herself to calm down so that the baby wasn't distressed.

"Don't," Quinn pleaded with Rachel. "Don't do this now. _Please_. Please don't put my baby under any more distress than she already is." Quinn's voice was cracking and tears were welling in her eyes, but Rachel kept herself cold and emotionless.

"You act so convincingly, Quinn, almost as if you really care about your baby. Almost as if you really love her. Imagine that. Imagine loving your child so much you can't stand the absolute pain that would rip through you if someone told you that you couldn't know about her. Not only that you wouldn't, but that you _couldn't_ be her mother, because you were a piece-of-shit Lima Loser."

When Rachel spat her epithet for Puck back at her, Quinn flinched and the heart rate monitor sped up. _This is going to be awesome_, Rachel thought (a little wickedly) _I'll be able to tell when I make her nervous or upset…or when she's lying, even if she's trying to hide it._

"What was I supposed to do, Man Hands?" Quinn shot back at her. "What exactly about Puck screams _father material_ to you? What in his past, in his present, indicates that he would care at all for his child? That he has any plan for a future that doesn't involve being a bum? Why on _earth_ would anyone want that for their child?"

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you tricked him into getting you pregnant."

For the second time in 10 minutes, Rachel's words hung in the air, striking fear into Quinn's heart. Rachel saw the heart rate monitor race faster and saw Quinn anxiously look at it and attempt to control herself.

"How do you know that I-" Quinn began, but Rachel cut her off.

"It doesn't matter how I know, it matters that it's true. You intentionally tricked him into impregnating you. He might believe that you just wanted to validate your self-worth because you are an incredibly shallow individual, but no girl, _no girl_, intentionally stays sober, stalks a boy (who is not her boyfriend) to his house, wakes him up, tells him she's on the pill, has sex with him, and then leaves with a note commanding silence – if she doesn't go in there knowing she wants to get pregnant. It doesn't happen."

Rachel has worked herself up and she can feel the words building up inside of her. Her anger is so justified, so absolute that she feels as if she can't control it, baby and heart-rate monitor be damned. But she knows that Noah wouldn't appreciate her help if it endangered the baby, so she struggles against herself, forming her words carefully.

"Why did you want to get pregnant, Quinn? In high school. Without Finn. Why would you want to do that? It doesn't make any _sense_!"

The pause that hangs in the air is only broken by the beeping of the heart rate monitors. Rachel knows that Quinn, too, is attempting to control herself for the baby's sake.

"I knew Finn would believe me if I told him I was. I also knew that he would be smart enough to make sure it didn't happen that way if I gave him the opportunity." Quinn finally whispered. "I could see that I was losing him, that he was falling for you more and more every day, and I couldn't lose my ticket out of Lima. I couldn't lose the boy I'd loved since 2nd grade. I needed to tie myself to him permanently because I knew he was a good guy – I knew that he wouldn't leave his child."

"You're right." Rachel said, her voice cold. "He wouldn't leave his child. He told me this afternoon that even if the child wasn't his, he would stay with you because he loved you, and always wanted to take care of you." She had to pause to breathe, she could feel her resolve shaking, and instead of anger, she now felt pain.

"He was _never_ going to leave you, Quinn. It wasn't me he was falling for every day – though I thought that, too. He was falling in love with the music, with expressing himself. It was only because I was such a large part of introducing him to it that you and I both thought that he was falling for me. I was so stupid to believe it. But you-" Rachel was openly crying now.

"You ruined 3 people's lives because of your stupidity, Quinn. Your stupidity blows mine out of the water. You and Finn may be fine, in the end. But add onto the 2 of you – what about your parents? What about Mrs. Hudson? How will they be okay? Most of all – what about Puck? You may think that he's not good father material, but that's because you know _NOTHING ABOUT HIM_. Nothing."

"Oh, and you do? The smurfette that he attempted to seduce to make me jealous? Please. What do you know about the wonderful Noah Puckerman?" Quinn's words were so sharp that Rachel could almost feel their cuts as they flew across the room.

"He's a good man, Quinn. He already loves his little girl. I wish you could have seen him this afternoon, when he thought he might have lost her. Even though he never even got to call her _his daughter_ to anyone who knew her, even though she was never openly _his_, he loved her and he was more afraid than anyone I've ever seen in my life when he thought she was in danger. That you believe so little of him only speaks to how shallow you truly are. You can't see the good in him – you don't allow yourself to open your eyes to the wonderful man that he wants to be – that he already is."

Rachel could see her words beginning to take their toll on Quinn, but she knew the battle wasn't yet won. She had to press on.

"You don't know that he has a little sister. You don't know that when his dad walked out on his family, Noah was 8 and his sister was 2. You don't know that his mom had to work all of the time, which meant that Noah had to be a dad at age 8. You don't know that he has taken care of her practically her whole life, and that the money he makes with his pool cleaning business goes towards supporting his family. You know none of this. How could you? You don't care."

Quinn was staring at her in shock. She hadn't known any of that.

"I picked him because I thought he wouldn't care," Quinn began. "He was such a stud, screwing all of those moms and all the girls in the Cheerios… I thought he wouldn't care. That I would just be another notch on his belt and that he would run away from any baby that could be his. I didn't want him to want to be involved. I thought he would lie."

"You thought wrong, didn't you. But now you know how wrong you are, and you know that the only way you can resolve this is to tell the truth. To let Puck into your life. He wants to be a father to that little girl, and unless you reach some sort of compromise with him, he will be bringing lawyers down on you so fast and hard that you'll be lucky if you even get supervised visitation when he's through."

Rachel knew that her words were bold, but she was so determined to support Noah through this that she vowed that if Quinn _didn't_ let Noah into his daughter's life, she would spend every dime she could get her hands on into making sure that Quinn was taken down. Brutally.

"Why are you doing this? Why are _you_ up here talking to me about this? You don't care about me. I know what Finn said to you this afternoon must have made you hate him, so I know it's not about Finn. You don't care about Puck! What's in this for you, huh?" Quinn stared hard at Rachel, and Rachel fought for an answer.

"Because I know what it's like, loving someone and not being able to have them love you back. Because everyday I get picked on, and get slushies thrown in my face and my myspace videos commented on and told that I'm not good enough, that I'm a loser. I may not be able to stand up for _myself_ against you hooligans, but I can damn sure stand up for someone else. I won't let you do to someone else what you do to me." _And maybe, just maybe, I care about Noah a little bit more than I realized_, she continued to herself. _Maybe a little bit more than is okay. _

"What do you want me to do?" Quinn asked, all malice gone from her voice.

"I want you to call the front desk. I want you to tell them that Noah Puckerman is allowed visitation. I want you to tell them that he needs to come straight up here, and that Finn is not to come with him. I want you to talk to Puck and I want you to work something out with him. I want you to be a good person, Quinn, who deserves her daughter. Your daughter has the love of a mother and _2 _fathers, Quinn. Don't deny her that."

Quinn didn't respond, she just sighed and turned towards the fetal heart rate monitor again. Rachel watched her as she settled a hand tenderly over her growing stomach. Quinn sighed again, and Rachel watched her intently, anxious with anticipation.

Quinn turned and picked up the phone next to her hospital bed. Before she dialed out she turned to Rachel and said, "I never looked at him the way you do, Rachel. Maybe you should learn from my stupidity and not let something like that go." Casting her eyes downward, she began to push the buttons for the front desk.

Rachel stood stock-still in shock. What had Quinn meant? Except it was fairly obvious what Quinn meant, and Rachel didn't think it applied. She was still heartbroken over her encounter with Finn; she couldn't even begin to think of loving someone else. She reviewed the events of the day in her mind, and discovered that she had fought for Noah Puckerman more times today than she had ever fought for Finn Hudson in the past. What did that mean? Did it mean that she loved Noah?

No. She pushed that thought firmly from her mind. She wasn't ready to love him – she didn't know him enough to love him. But maybe it meant…maybe it meant that she had never truly loved Finn. That what she had felt for him was just the thrill of her first crush. Because now she knew what love was – it wasn't what she felt for Finn. It was the intensity in Noah's eyes when he thought of his baby girl. It was the gentle way Quinn curved her hand over her belly and concentrated on the fetal heart rate monitor. It didn't always happen the way you intended it to, but she felt that she had truly experienced the joys of first love for the first time, without even being in a relationship.

She wasn't in love with Noah Puckerman. She just loved the way he loved his daughter. She could live with that.


	8. And This Time I Know it's for Real

**A/N**: **Is there anyone else who writes fics that checks their reviews/story alerts/favorite alerts everyday hoping for a particular writer they revere to review their story? Or is that just me? **

**Disclaimer: I would like to own Mark Salling, please. **

**

* * *

**As the elevator doors slid shut he closed his eyes. Leaning his forehead against the elevator door, Puck took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, trying to calm his shredded nerves. He was going to go see Quinn. He was going to go talk to her rationally. He was going to find out what was happening with his daughter. And it was all happening because of Rachel Berry.

The elevator lurched to a stop and the door slid open. As he walked down the hallway to Quinn's room, his heart thudded in time with his footsteps. Stopping outside of room 317, he took another deep breath, and knocked on the door.

Rachel answered the door to the room; her eyes were downcast. She looked back at Quinn and then raised her face to meet his. Her expression was guarded, and Puck felt a twinge of guilt about everything he had put her through today. Her expression softened, and she told him, "I'm going to let you two talk alone for awhile. I'll be out here in the hallway if anything happens, and that way I can keep Finn from sneaking up here to find out what's going on."

She briefly squeezed his hand and then moved across the hallway and sat on the floor outside the door. He watched her as she pulled sheet music from her bag and began reviewing the score. She didn't look back up at him, and though it shouldn't have, it sort of irritated him. He was counting on her for confidence.

He turned around and walked fully into the room. He saw Quinn wrapped up in the hospital blankets with her hair matted to her forehead. He took in the sight of the needles in her arms and the cables hooked up to different machinery. He studied the way she curved her hand protectively over her stomach and never turned away from the fetal heart rate monitor, watching the screen blip evenly in time.

He turned and softly shut the door behind him. Walking towards Quinn's bed, he quietly asked, "Is that her heartbeat?"

At his words Quinn turned towards him and her face crumpled.

"Hey, hey…" Puck cried, racing forward to hold her. She grasped him but continued to cry quietly. _At least it's not shrieking sobs_, Puck thought to himself. Anything was better than that.

"Yes…" Quinn said shakily. "That's her heartbeat. It's so much stronger than it was earlier today. There was one point in the ambulance when the EMT said he couldn't find a heartbeat. When he said that, I thought my heart was breaking inside my chest. I literally couldn't breathe."

Puck's mouth set into a stony line and he slowly closed his eyes, attempting to control the fear that rushed through him. _If she had died…_ he cut off the thought. She hadn't died. She wasn't going to die. She was his little girl – she was strong enough to survive.

"What did the doctors say?" he asked, trying to move forward in their conversation.

"They're not sure why it started – I didn't take enough vitamins at the beginning of my pregnancy, and I ate sushi a couple of times. I didn't know you couldn't eat sushi when you were pregnant," she justified defensively. _I did_, Puck thought.

"It might have been all the movement with the Cheerios and Glee, or maybe stress, but they don't know for sure. It could have been a combination of everything. Which sucks. Because I was dead set on pinning it on you and the conversation we had just had."

Puck felt as if someone had reached down his throat and squeezed his stomach. If he could have caused…if he had actually…if it had been his fault…

"You wouldn't have, though," he whispered in a strangled voice.

"Why not, Puck? It would have been the easy way out," she replied.

"You would have had to have told them what we were fighting about for it to make any sense. You wouldn't want anyone to know that I am the father of the baby." Those words tore at him; but he knew that right now, they were tearing at her worse.

"Yes, I would have," she replied in a meek tone, her eyes downcast.

"No you wouldn't, Quinn. I had just asked you to do just that, and you fought me so hard on it that you ended up in the hospital!" he could feel the familiar anger rising, and after such a trying day, he was hard-pressed to keep it under control.

"Okay, you're right. I wouldn't have. But I would now." He couldn't believe that she had said those words. He felt as if he had entered into an alternate reality, because there was no way in hell that Quinn would ever give up her life to include him. He laughed shakily.

"Did Rachel drug you? Or blackmail you or something? Because this is a complete 180 from this afternoon, Quinn. Just a few hours ago. What happened?" He was incredulous. He had never believed that she would ever consider claiming him as the far. She had been so adamant about it.

"No drugs, ass. No blackmail. Well, maybe not real blackmail, but emotional blackmail. She told me things about you that I didn't know, Noah. She made me understand just how far this web of hurt was going. Even so, it wasn't really Rachel's doing, it was hers," she lovingly caressed her stomach. "I almost died when I thought I was losing her. I couldn't imagine feeling that every second of every day, fearing that I would lose her. I realized that I didn't understand how you could do that. How you've survived that fear and that pain for so long. Rachel just helped it along, but it was all this one's doing."

"So does this mean you're going to tell Finn the truth? And your parents? And Mrs. Hudson? And everyone at school? Does this mean I get to be a daddy?" His heart practically burst with happiness at the words.

"We'll have to work out a plan, so no, we won't be shouting the news from the rooftops today. But, soon. I know how much she means to you. She deserves your love just as much as she deserves mine," Quinn continued.

"Um…" he stuttered over the next question that had just occurred to him. "Does that mean that you're going to want me to be your boyfriend, or something?" he asked, finding that he was surprisingly uncomfortable with the idea.

"No!" Quinn shrieked and then blushed. "No," she continued in a quieter voice. "I'm going to give her up for a private adoption, I haven't changed my mind about that. It's the best thing I can do for her – that we can do for her. And let's face it, Puck. You and I… we're not exactly meant to be. I tricked you into this in the first place. And no matter what, I'll always love Finn. That's what got me into this in the first place. I didn't want to lose Finn."

"That's dumb, Fabray," Puck commented.

"Don't even get me started on what's dumb, Puckerman," she shot back. "But we'll work out a deal and a plan later. Right now… I just want to go to sleep. I want her to be okay. But we will work out a plan that works for both of us, okay? I promise you that. I already promised Rachel that, too. But it's been a long day, and my parents are coming back soon, and Mr. Schue is coming, and I don't think that now's the best time to be dealing with the whole baby-daddy issue. Our parents just found out that they're going to be grandparents. Let's give them a minute to deal with that before we throw something else at them, okay?" she questioned him.

"Okay," he whispered his assent. "What do you want me to do now? Do you want me to leave?"

"Yes," she replied, her eyes back on the heart rate monitor. "I'll let you know if anything happens. If you'd like, you can come by tomorrow and visit her, and we can talk a little more. We'll take it one step at a time. So go home now." She smiled at him.

"But take Berry with you. She seems like a good support system for you. I think she's good for you right now. "

"Sure," Puck said and walked towards the door. "And Quinn?" he called.

"Hmm?" she noised.

"Thanks for letting me be a part of her life," he said, and turned and walked to the door.

When he opened the door, the first thing he saw was Rachel sitting on the floor in front of him. She looked up, worried, and he knew he had to explain a lot of things to her. Soon. Not right now, but soon. First, he needed to thank her and get back to his car.

"How did it go?" she asked him as she struggled to her feet.

"It went awesome!" he exclaimed, a smile breaking across his face.

"I'm going to be a dad!" he cried and pulled Rachel into a giant hug.

"That's great!" Rachel exclaimed, and took his hand in hers. "So tell me what you said, how you started off the conversation, whether or not she got mad…" he could hear Rachel babbling and was somewhat aware of what she was questioning, but he couldn't concentrate on her. He felt as if a million suns had burst into flame inside of him, and he could feel their warmth radiate through him and he grinned uncontrollably.

"I'm gonna be a dad!" he said again, pulling Rachel against him again.

They were on the elevator at this point, waiting for the door to close.

"That's wonderful, Noah," Rachel said as the elevator doors began to shut. Out of sight, standing at a sign indicating which way to which room numbers, Will Schuester stood with his mouth open in shock.

_Noah Puckerman is going to be a father? To Quinn Fabray's baby? _His mouth gaped open and he felt a hand clap his shoulder from behind.

"Hey, Mr. Schue," Finn said. "Thanks for coming to see us."

Will Schuester had only one thing on his mind – _how much did Finn know? _

2 floors below home, Noah Puckerman was still filled with happiness. _I'm going to be a dad!_ he thought exuberantly. He was going to be a great dad. He was going to love his little girl more than anyone possibly could. He loved her that much already.


	9. God Knows I've Fallen in Love

**A/N: Does this feel like it's moving too fast, or too slow? Please, more reviews. They are my lifeblood!**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing at all in relation to this story. No worries.**

**

* * *

**Rachel had slumped against the wall pretending to read her sheet music as Puck went into the room to talk to Quinn. In reality, she had no idea what the notes on the page meant – there was no rest, no pianissimo, no forte… no hold. The staves and the lyrics swam in front of her face and she blinked back tears, forcing herself to hold it together until the door clicked shut.

Laying her sheet music to the side, she pulled her knees to her chest and cried. So much had happened in the past few hours – her world had been turned upside down.

"You locked out?" a passing janitor questioned her.

"Oh, no, just waiting for a friend to finish a private conversation," Rachel attempted to smile and be polite.

"You doin' okay, sweetie?" the janitor asked, concern on his face.

"Oh, sure, I'm fine… I just feel like the world has turned and left me here," she said.

"You look like the kind of girl that can catch up, honey," the janitor replied. "You need anything, just let me know." He began to push his cart down the hall, and Rachel stared at his back, watching him slump down the hallway.

_Was this what it would be like for Noah_? she wondered. She knew that he had a pool cleaning business, but this was Ohio, and pools don't need to be cleared year-round. Swimming pool season was gone – the leaves were changing colors and each morning Rachel had a light frost on her windshield. Where would he get the money for a lawyer, or to support his child?

_I could give him the money for the lawyers_, she thought. _I have all of my bat mitzvah money saved, and I've got my Broadway fund…sure, it would mean stardom would have to wait, but it would be worth it_ she reasoned.

He would never take her money. Noah Puckerman had too much pride, she knew that. He would never admit to needing help from someone else, much less her. There would have to be a different way.

_Unless, of course, they agree to give the baby up for adoption_, she thought. She didn't see that happening – she could see that Noah's love for his baby girl was so pure and so strong that he would never give her up. She would have to make another plan, find another way. There was no way she could let him lose what he was fighting so hard to keep.

_He's such a good man_, she thought to herself, and then recoiled. She couldn't believe she had just thought the words "good man" in relation to Noah Puckerman. She must be losing her mind! _Except…_except she wasn't. _He really is a good man_, she realized. Sure, he had thrown countless slushies in her face, ruined many different sets of clothing, egged her house, tp'd her yard, and generally made her life miserable for years but… knowing what she now knew about his family life, she could almost forgive him. _Almost._

He'd never had any sort of male role model. He had been straddled with raising himself and raising a little girl. He had had to grow up so fast that he had never had time to release any energy and pent up frustration. It stood to reason that he would attempt to form some release, some escape at school, where he could break away from Noah and become Puck. The irony of his alter ego astounded her.

She giggled. _Puckish Puck_, she thought, and then shook her head. He's still Noah to me. He always will be.

_What always?_ she wondered. There were no guarantees of always here. Hell. They hadn't even spoken since the incident on the bleachers. Still, she knew that no matter what had happened between them, she would always think of him as Noah. Those few days had solidified that for her.

Actually, hearing his little sister refer to him as Noah when he came to pick her up before school had solidified that for her. Noah had volunteered to drive her to school the day after they had made out in her room, and (surprisingly) she accepted. When she had gotten into the car, his sister was bouncing in the back seat, chattering about her friends and homework, and then, to Rachel's surprise, she heard the girl tell _Noah_ that he had to come home and jump on the trampoline with her, because he had _promised_.

After they had dropped his sister off at school, Rachel teased him about being Noah the rest of the ride to WMHS. Following that, the name kind of stuck.

She was shaken out of her reverie when the door to the hospital room opened. Instantly her stomach clench and her forehead furrowed with worry. It had been too fast. They couldn't have worked everything out. He still looked concerned…

She scrambled to get her sheet music back in her back and stand up at the same time. He came to help her, but she had already managed to gain her balance.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"It went awesome!" he exclaimed, a smile breaking across his face."I'm going to be a dad!" he cried and pulled Rachel into a giant hug.

"That's great!" she exclaimed, and took his hand in hers. "So tell me what you said, how you started off the conversation, whether or not she got mad at you for telling me, what happened with the baby? What did you say? What kind of agreement did you come to?" Rachel was hurriedly asking questions, pretending that they were the only things she had been thinking of while he was inside the room. Looking up at him, she knew that he wasn't registering what she was saying, he was too excited to come down from that high.

"I'm gonna be a dad!" he said again, pulling Rachel against him

They were on the elevator at this point, waiting for the door to close.

"That's wonderful, Noah," Rachel said as the elevator doors began to shut. "I'm so happy for you. I know that's what you wanted." She looked up into his beaming face, and wondered whether or not now was the time to broach the subject about their plan for the baby. She decided not to pull him back to reality yet.

"Rachel, thank-you so much. I don't know what you said to Quinn, I don't know how you got her to see reason, but you have been so wonderful today. I don't even know why… I've been such an ass to you ever since you broke up with me, and I'm sorry," he said, more than a little uncomfortably.

"Don't worry about it now," she said, and smiled back up at him.

"Thank-you," he said again, and pulled her close against him. She burrowed her face into his chest and held him tightly until the elevator doors opened. As the doors parted they separated, but Noah grabbed her hand and held it as they walked out of the hospital.

"I'll take you back to your car," she said as they walked towards the parking lot.

"You don't have to yet, if you don't want to," he replied. "I don't really want to go home yet because my mom and sister will be there, and I can't tell them about this yet, but it would be way too hard to try to hide it right now."

"O…kay," Rachel began. "Do you want me to take you somewhere else, instead?"

"No…if it's okay with you, I'd just like to hang out with you for a little bit," he replied.

Rachel absorbed this as they got closer to the car. When they reached the vehicle, her hand separated from his, and she suddenly found herself missing his warmth.

She unlocked the doors and they slid inside the car. She turned it on and pushed the power button on her stereo. Idina Menzel's voice came blaring from the speakers, and Puck twirled the volume dial down to an acceptable level.

"Wicked? Really, Berry?" he half-smiled at her.

"It is a fantastic original cast recording; both Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenowith do fantastic jobs. You should listen to musicals more often." She continued to lecture him as she drove.

"Where are you taking me? Noah asked as she turned to go in the opposite direction of her house.

"You'll see," she said, a smile on her face.

"Fine. I won't play 20 Questions if I get to be in charge of the music once we get there."

"No! Then it'll be all screamy death metal because you want to punish me for show tunes! No deal!" Rachel fought back. "Bring on the questions!"

"Hmm… okay. How about I promise not to play screamy death metal, I get to be in charge of the music selection, but you get 3 veto powers. Fair?" he asked.

Rachel pretended to think it over. The reality was, they were in her car, she didn't have satellite radio, and besides the regular radio stations, they were only equipped with her iPod and CD collection. He couldn't really pick anything she didn't like.

"Fair enough," she said, smirking inside.

She pulled into the parking lot of James Park, near the horse rings.

"You took me to a park, Berry? Are we going to play in the jungle gym?" he asked.

"No, delinquent, I brought you here to open the trunk, climb into the back, lay down and listen to music. I come here a lot because the riding classes are normally over by five, and I can lay here and listen to music and think and sing without inconveniencing anyone. I can be totally at peace here." _Not to mention the fact that my other place of peace has now been permanently violated_ she thought.

She got out of the driver's seat and walked around to the back of her Explorer. She opened the trunk and climbed in, throwing music books into the front seat and then folding the back seat down.

"Get in," she said to Noah, who was standing at the back of the Explorer with a weird look on his face.

"It's still my pick," he said as he clambered into the car.

"Well then, pick," she said, and thrust her iPod and her CD book at him.

"I already did," he said, as he pulled an iPod out of his letterman jacket pocket.

_Shit_. Rachel thought, but she had no choice but to go along with it. As Noah plugged the iPod into the car converter and turned the keys to the "battery on" position, she settled herself lengthwise across the width of the car.

"What channel are you broadcasting on?" he asked, turning around. "And where exactly am I supposed to be?" he asked, noticing her position.

"87.7." she said. "The same way as me. You get the outer edge so that you can see more of the sky," she said, forming a pillow out of her sweater and placing it on the right back wheel well.

Instead of responding, he changed the broadcast channel on his iPod and plugged it in. Turning the volume up a little bit, he pressed play.

Before the music could start, he had climbed over her and was settling himself in next to her, banging his head on the wheel well and curling his legs up on the other side.

"Yeah, this molded plastic makes a great pillow," he said, squirming.

"Here, take this," Rachel shoved the sweater/pillow at him. She then curled next to him, staring out at the horse rings and the darkening sky.

The soft strains of music began to play and she attempted to place the song.

Just as the song was beginning to build, rain began to fall in fat drops all around the car.

"Try…When my inside's out…I don't even try…I know I have seen the best I'll have…I don't even try…Never been one to take my chances…I don't even try" sang Ryan Miller.

"Thank-you for forcing me to try," Noah whispered to Rachel, and she pulled herself closer to him, spooning him, covering his chest with her arm.

"Clouds are coming…Air gets heavy…Looks like trouble on a rainy day…Sun starts sinking…Can't see my shadow…It looks like trouble on a rainy day" continued the song.

Rachel placed her hand over Noah's chest and felt his heart beating inside of it. As the song neared its final crescendo, she could feel his heart beat speed up, racing with the drum beats. She looked up at him and saw tears slide silently down his face as he stared out of the back of her car.

"Holes uncovered…Walls will crumble…All spells trouble on a rainy day…"the lyrics stopped, but the music lingered on, filling and haunting the car.

She covered his heart with her hand, feeling its pulse beneath her race wildly. She covered his heart with her hand to keep it from jumping out of his skin. She covered his heart with her hand to feel his life beat beneath her. She covered his heart with her hand to pull a little bit of his life force inside of her. She covered his heart with her hand to protect him, and to love him.

* * *

_The song is "Rainy Day" by Guster, and it is one of my absolute all-time favorite songs. Listen to it. Amazing._

_Additionally, I have now become a review whore. Please review!!!!!_


	10. It's Strange But it's True

**A/N: Got my Glee soundtrack and special poster in the mail today - to my surprise, the poster was actually signed! As in, you can see where the Sharpie bled through to the back of the poster in some places, and where it skipped a little in others. ::swoon:: So happy. Literally, the best drive to work I've ever had.**

**Disclaimer: I finally own part of Glee! Just not any of the rights. **

Rachel had driven him back to his car in the rain. It was dark now, the stars obliterated by the clouds overhead. While she had been driving to the park and laying down rules for the music, Puck had been secretly making a playlist on his iPod. He had planned out all the music – things he needed to hear, things that would help him say things to her that she needed to hear. Songs that could soothe his pain and express his joy. He was beginning to wonder if Rachel was right about all of this – music changes/influences/drives/reflects your life – how could you not wish to burst into song to express yourself?

He smiled at the thought. He shouldn't mention anything like that to Rachel – she'd take to speaking to people in lyrics, not caring if no one understood a word she said. But then again… it might be a change from her super-speedy talk.

Flashing back to reality, he realized that Rachel was humming softly to the song that was playing now. She had changed the music back to her choices once they got back in the front of the car. He could barely hear it, so he turned up the volume. It was "Maybe This Time," the song that April Rhodes had blown him away with when she "auditioned" for glee.

"This is from Cabaret, isn't it?" he asked her.

"You know musicals?" Rachel responded incredulously.

"I'm not a complete Neanderthal, Berry," he replied. "I do have some class and culture. And a mom."

"Yes, it's from Cabaret," she said, her voice quiet.

"You quit for Finn," he stated boldly.

"Yes," she whispered back. "He asked me to. He told me he didn't know what was going to happen in the future with Quinn, and I believed him. The next day I found out that she was pregnant. Of course, at the time, I thought she was pregnant with his baby, but it…it hurt, _so much_ to know that I was only being played. He was lying all along."

He felt the anger towards Finn build inside him as he watched her wipe a tear from her face.

"I'm sorry, Rachel. I'm sorry he hurt you. I'm sorry _I _hurt you."

She turned on her blinker and began to pull into the school parking lot.

"I forgave you a long time ago, Noah Puckerman. I forgave you again earlier today. Don't make me have to forgive you again."

"I promise to try not to hurt you ever again," he said. He didn't know what made him say it, but he needed her to know that he appreciated everything that she had done for him, and that he realized that he had been absolutely awful towards her (for no reason).

"I can believe that about you, Noah. You've changed my perspective on you completely. But I will never be able to forgive Finn. Not ever." Her words were harsh, her voice rough. Puck knew better than to press the subject further.

"Thank-you for today," he said as she pulled into the spot next to his truck.

"You're welcome, Noah. You need someone to stand by you. I'm honored to do so. Your love for your daughter is profound, and you truly are a good man. And now…I think you're even beginning to be a good friend," she laughed, her eyes downcast, hands fiddling in her lap.

"Goodnight, Rachel," he said as he unbuckled his seatbelt. "I'll see you tomorrow." He gave her a one-armed hug and then climbed out of the car.

"Good night, Noah," she replied, and he watched her taillights until they vanished from the parking lot.

He had needed that quiet time with Rachel (quiet time with Rachel Berry? Who knew?) but he still wasn't ready to go home. If he was being honest with himself, he wanted to go back to the hospital and check on his little girl. Just to be sure.

He pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his address book until he got to her name.

"Hey, Puck," she said. She sounded exhausted, and he felt guilty about calling her and bothering her.

"Hey, Quinn. I was wondering; I mean, I know I saw you earlier and you said I could come by tomorrow, but I was wondering if I could come back again tonight? Just for a little bit? Not to talk or anything, I know Finn's there and you're not ready for that yet, but… just to hear her heartbeat again?"

He heard her sigh, and felt his spirits plummet.

"I would want to do the same thing. You can come. Just please, be normal. Mr. Schuester is here, too."

"Don't worry, I won't say anything. I'll be normal," he said.

"Yeah, well, normal people normal, Puckerman, not ass-normal, okay?" she laughed.

"Yes ma'am," he replied, and clicked his phone shut.

When he got to the hospital, he gave the desk attendant a smirk and headed straight for the elevator. When he stepped off of the elevator, he marveled at the fact that the last time he had made this journey, he had been full of fear. This time, he was full of hope.

He knocked twice on the door to the room and then let himself in. Quinn was in the hospital bed, staring at the monitor again, but she looked up at him and smiled when he came in. Finn was sitting in a chair to the left of her bed, looking weary and world-worn. Mr. Schuester was in a chair across from them, under the TV. When he made eye contact with him, Mr. Schuester shot him a look that was a mixture of concern and the evil eye.

_What's that all about? _Puck wondered as he made his way into the room.

"Hey man, how's it goin'?" Finn asked, rising from his chair.

"Not too bad, you know," Puck replied. He felt he had forgotten how to talk to his best friend. "Hey, Mr. Schue," he said, and Mr. Schue nodded in response to his greeting, looking away.

Puck settled himself into the last chair in the room, positioning it so that he could clearly see the fetal heart rate monitor and discreetly watch it blip evenly across the screen.

For a few minutes the group made small talk, discussing glee and rehearsals and reworking the songs so that Quinn was as stationary as possible. Puck was grateful to Mr. Schue for allowing Quinn to stay in Glee even though she couldn't perform the choreography. He knew that Quinn would need to stay involved with Glee because that was where she had found her true friends.

"I think it's really great that you're being so accommodating about Quinn, Mr. Schue," Puck commented, wanting to make sure that his thanks were expressed.

"Well, I think you should be," Mr. Schue responded a little sharply. Then he sighed and sat back in his chair.

"I know it's not really my place, but I've become a bit heavily involved in this pregnancy, from the moment Finn came to me in tears because he was going to be a father. Maybe that's why I have to do this. I've become emotionally involved in all of you, because I've seen how you've all transformed. It's as if you're not my students anymore, but an extension of my family…" he faltered for words.

Quinn looked nervous, Puck was concerned, and Finn just looked confused (but then again, Finn always looked confused).

"I hate that I'm about to say this, especially now, here of all places," Mr. Schue continued, "but it has to be done. And I'm hoping that because we are already in a hospital, and because I am (still) your teacher and therefore an "authority figure" that this will go better here than anywhere else."

He paused for a breath and looked at Quinn, Finn, and Puck individually.

"I'm sorry, Quinn. I'm sorry, Finn. I'm sorry, Puck, about what I'm about to do. Please know that." He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the wall.

Bracing himself for support, Mr. Schue opened his mouth and then closed it again. He opened his mouth and tried again, appearing to have to force the words from his lips.

"Finn, it appears that everyone here knows something you do not. Something you should be aware of." Puck felt his heart stop in his chest and his blood run cold. He locked eyes with Quinn, who was now in a state of abject fear. Her eyes blazed into his, and then she turned quickly to Finn.

"Mr. Schue, wait," Quinn said. "He should hear this from me, not from you."

Pucks eyes traveled anxiously between Finn, Quinn, and Mr. Schue. He braced himself against the wall, hoping against all hope that what Rachel had told him was true. That what Finn himself had said in the lobby of this hospital held true.

"Finn," Quinn began, eyes darting terrifiedly between Finn and Puck. "Finn, it's not possible for a girl to get pregnant in a hot tub if there are bathing suits between them and there is no um…" she blushed and glanced guiltily at Mr. Schue.

"If there is no insertion. So you're not the biological father of this baby. Puck is."

The room was dead quiet, save for the humming and blipping of the machines.

Puck watched as Finn absorbed the information and truly understood what it meant. He watched as his best friend's muscles bunched and tightened beneath his clothing and his hands grabbed hard on his knees.

"What? Why?" Finn asked, staring stupidly at Quinn. He had yet to turn to look at Puck.

"Well, it's actually a long story," Quinn began, and Puck wanted to jump in and help her out, but it was her story that mattered to Finn, not his. He needed to let her tell it, to make sure that she didn't lie and cast him in a bad light. He wanted to make sure she told the truth.

Quinn began to relay the story to Finn, sticking true (mostly) to the details. As she spoke, Puck saw Finn's fists clench harder and harder and saw the vein in his neck stand out further and further from the rest of his skin.

She hadn't even gotten so far as to tell the part about her leaving the party to go after Puck when Finn lost control of his anger.

"What the _FUCK_ man?" he yelled at Puck. Finn was standing now, his body shaking. "What the fuck is wrong with you? How could you do that to me, to her? How dare you – we've known each other since we were _4_ – you fucking _BASTARD!"_ Finn shouted.

At this, Puck could tell that Finn lost whatever tenuous grasp he had held on his anger and Finn flew across the room at him, knocking him up against the wall and pinning him there with one arm. Mr. Schue stood up as if to intercede, but there was no need.

Puck did not fight back. He did not protect himself. He knew the truth of the situation, and perhaps once Finn had heard the whole story, he would calm down, But Puck knew he was right to be angry – not because Puck had had sex with his girlfriend, taking the virginity she was supposed to be saving for him – but because he had been lying about it for months.

Mr. Schue came forward and placed a hand on Finn's shoulder; cautioning him. Quinn was crying in the hospital bed, begging Finn to stop and to come back and to listen. Puck heard Quinn's heart rate monitor begin to beep wildly and milliseconds later, the fetal heart rate monitor began to beep faster and faster.

"Finn. Stop." Puck said, his eyes on the monitor. "Please, just stop for now, for here. You're upsetting Quinn. You're distressing the baby. You haven't heard the full story. Please just listen. If you still want to kill me later, I won't defend myself. But don't do it here. Not in front of her."

Puck didn't know which "her" he was defending – Quinn or his daughter.

"Finn, he's right," Mr. Schue said, pulling Finn's arm off of Puck's chest.

Finn shook him off, grabbed Puck by the shirt, and pushed him up against the wall.

"_Leave_," Finn hissed in his face. "_Leave_, you rat bastard. You are dead to me. I won't do this here, but I will do this. Get the _fuck_ out of my face." He released him.

Puck walked shakily towards the door, and turned back once his door was on the handle.

"Finn, please listen to everything she says. The whole story. Mr. Schue, I'd appreciate it if you would listen to the whole story, too. I want everything out in the open."

"Quinn," he said, turning towards her. "Tell the truth. For God's sake, please tell the truth."

He turned back to the door and walked through it, closing it quietly behind him. He thought it was ironic – the last time he had made this journey, he had been filled with hope and happiness. Now he was full of fear, sadness, and anger.

He wandered zombie-like out of the hospital and out to his car. When he got into the car he put his head against the steering wheel and cried. He had cried a lot today – too many times. He wanted to go somewhere safe. He could only think of one person.

"Hello?" she queried warily.

"It's me. Can I come over?" he could barely speak.

"Oh Noah, it's late…" she began; he could hear her hesitation.

"Please. I need to be with someone. Finn knows."

"Of course," she said, and he could practically feel the balm in her words through the phone line.

"Come around to the basement door when you get here. I don't want to wake up my dads." He could almost hear her brain whirling as she concocted her plan.

"Thank-you," he said. He knew that he was in the right, that he had done nothing to be blamed for (except for the lying), but he also knew that he needed her. He needed Rachel Berry.

* * *

Okay. Ultimatum time - I want reviews, people! No reviews, no new chapter. So there.

* * *


	11. I Can't Get Over the Way

**A/N: I suppose I need to clarify my intentions from my last author's note. I am a first-time author, so I feel a bit nervous every time I post a chapter. I want to make sure I get it right, and that I'm staying to true to the characters in the show as well as the Puck-and-Rachel show in my head. I was intending to inspire more detailed reviews (which I received and truly appreciate) but through some conversations with readers, I've discovered the I may have slightly alienated some people. I apologize for that - I had forgotten what it felt like to be guilted into reviewing. To all those who reviewed (both good and bad) I appreciate your criticism, love, and comments. I hope I make good on your words. **

**Disclaimer: I want me some Glee. All I have is a CD, a poster, and some DVR'd episodes. Kosher?

* * *

**

She was dressed in pajamas and nervous as hell, but still she waited by the back door, listening intently for any sound of his approach. Technically, she wasn't breaking the rules, as her fathers had never told her "no boys in the house without our knowledge/after dark/in the basement with you alone," but then again… they'd never had a reason to.

She didn't know why she had agreed to do this – even though she wasn't breaking any structured rules, she felt as if she were breaking her fathers' trust in her. They trusted in her to do the right thing – but wasn't this the right thing? They had always told her to be there for her friends and to offer support to people who needed it. If anyone needed her, it was Noah after his encounter with Finn. She didn't even know how it had happened, or what had actually happened, but she knew that when he had said, "Finn knows," she had heard his heart break, and she had burned to comfort him.

There was a soft noise at the door, which she assumed was Noah arriving. She opened the basement door and there he stood, slightly disheveled with streaks of dirt on his face.

"What happened to you?" she said as she led him inside.

"I didn't want you to get in trouble, so I parked like, 6 houses down and came through the woods. I tripped a few times, though, so that explains," he gestured to his dirty appearance, "this. Sorry."

"You don't have anything to apologize for. You could have parked the next house down and my dads wouldn't have noticed… they only wake up for weird things in or exactly around the house – my neighbors have parties all the time, so my dads have gotten used to car doors slamming and headlights shining across their walls at all hours of the night…"

She looked at him – he looked dirty and distressed, but at the same time she saw an odd glow in him – it was if though he was downtrodden, he was lit by an inner pride that glowed out of him.

"Come here," she said, reaching her hand out to him. She grasped his hand and she led him over to the sofa. "Sit here." She made sure he sat down and then went over to the wet bar.

She turned the water on and while she waited for it to turn warm she rummaged beneath one of the cabinets, retrieving band-aids and Neosporin. She ran a dishrag under the warm water and squeezed out the towel. She toted the band-aids, Neosporin, and warm towel back to the sofa and settled down next to him.

"Turn your face towards me," she said, and raised the warm towel to his face. Gently, she began to wipe the dirt off of his face. "Tell me what happened."

Noah began recounting the events at the hospital to her as she gently wiped dirty smudges from his skin. After finishing his face, she moved down to his hands and arms, wiping away any trace of his passage through the woods. She studied him carefully – he had a few cuts, nicks really, from the branches he had stumbled through. She unscrewed the Neosporin and began to dab it carefully over the cuts.

He continued to recount his tale as she carefully dabbed at his face. Once she was done applying the Neosporin she began placing band-aids haphazardly on his cuts.

As he finished telling his story she placed the last band-aid over a scratch by his eyebrow.

"I don't know what she told him after I left," Noah said, "I have no idea if Finn or Mr. Schuester will even believe her. I don't know if I'll ever get my best friend back, or if Mr. Schue will ever respect me again. I don't know if _anyone_ will ever speak to me again, based on what she says." He sighed.

Tenderly she traced her fingertips lightly across his eyebrow, just beneath the band-aid. As she swept her fingers across his skin she felt her fingertips tingle, that weird tingle that almost feels like a certain body part has fallen asleep. _Pins and needles,_ she thought, _electric. _Abruptly, she pulled her hand away from his face.

"I believe you," she said.

She saw him stare at her and she felt as if he was trying to find a lie in her face. Uncomfortable, she stood in front of him.

"Give me your shirt," she said.

"What?" Noah asked, appearing startled.

"Your shirt. Those stains will set if we don't get them out quickly enough. I have enough laundry to justify a load – I'll put some stain remover on them and get it sorted out," she said.

He leaned back against the sofa and began to unbutton his shirt. She stared at his fingers as he slowly undid each button, starting at the top. She watched intently as the sweep of his collarbone came into view. His fingers were so nimble, so _dextrous_ she remembered. His fingers moved down the buttons and her eyes were locked on them, watching as the first planes of his chest came into view.

She felt a warm heat flush through her and was surprised by the disappointment she felt when she saw that he wore an undershirt beneath his button-down. He slowly undid the last of the buttons and pulled at the edges of his shirt. As he pulled the edges back behind him to remove the shirt, the molded edges of his shoulders came into view and she heard herself suck in an involuntary gasp. She had meant what she said when she had commented that his arms were lovely.

He pulled the shirt the rest of the way off and held it out to her. The only indication he gave that he had heard her gasp was the raised eyebrow he gave her as he held the shirt out to her. She grasped it and fled up the stairs two at a time, her blush fighting against her logic.

_Woman! Get ahold of yourself! His arms aren't _that_ lovely_ she tried to convince herself, but she knew it wasn't true. She gathered a bunch of clothing into her arms and went down to the washing machine. The entire time she was loading and starting the wash she watched Noah repeatedly take off his shirt on the screen in her mind.

As she finished her task she shook her head and headed back towards the basement stairs. _Calm down, crazy,_ she told herself and descended the stairs with her head held high.

He was standing in front of the movie cases, studying the titles.

"Want to watch a movie?" he asked, barely glancing up from the shelves.

"Yes?" she squeaked. _No, I want to watch you take off your shirt again_, she thought, and mentally slapped a silencer over her mouth. _Shut UP! _she told herself.

"Cool," he responded and slipped a DVD case from the shelf. "Want to watch _Green Street Hooligans_," he asked. "It's really good."

While it wasn't her first choice for a movie to watch with the incredible wife-beatered wonder, she wasn't about to say no, but she couldn't say yes right off the bat. As it wasn't a musical or a romantic comedy, it would seem out of character.

"Are you sure you want to watch a movie?" she asked him, more control in her voice now. "Do you just want to talk?"

"To be honest, I've had enough of talking for the day," he replied. "Talking only seems to cause more catastrophes and make things worse."

"Okay," she said, and got up to put the DVD into the player.

They watched the movie in relative silence, and Rachel found herself constantly checking on Noah through the corner of her eye. The movie ended, and Noah yawned and stretched, reaching his arms over his head.

"It's like, 2 o'clock in the morning," he said, checking the time on his phone. "I should probably go."

"Oh! Your shirt's still in the wash! It's too cold to go out in just a um… undershirt," she blushed. "Let me throw it in the dryer, and then you can go when it's dry, okay?" she said. She didn't give him a choice. She tip-toed up the stairs and threw the clothes into the dryer.

She came back down the stairs and Noah hadn't moved. She knew he didn't want to talk, but she didn't know what else to do with him. The last time they had been alone in her house…_No. Don't go there, _she thought. Not the right place, not the right time, not the right guy. No. Don't even think about it.

"Want to watch another movie?" she asked.

"Sure," he replied, settling back into the cushions.

"My choice," she said, and slipped another DVD case off of the shelf. She slid the DVD into the player and settled back onto the sofa at the opposite end of Noah.

The familiar music began to play and she turned towards Noah, half expecting to see him scowling at her selection.

"Rent's one of my mom's favorite musicals," he said, staring at the screen. "I swear, she almost cried the first time she saw the trailer for this in the movie theater. 'Seasons of Love' is one of her all-time favorite songs. She belts it out while she's cleaning the house. Only problem is – the woman can't sing to save her life."

Rachel laughed, imagining this. She had never met his mother; she had always been at work when Rachel had come over during their brief relationship. Still, she could imagine his mother doing this. Rachel felt as if she had come to know his mother through the small details that he had shared with her in their time together.

"How do you measure, a year in the life?" sang the cast as the movie blared to life across the screen. She settled in to watch one of her favorite movies, her eyes flicking only occasionally to where Noah was curled into the sofa.

She woke up to a shining blue screen. She was curled up on the sofa, covered in the throw blanket they kept on the back of the couch. She was warm and she felt safe. "I'll just sleep here," she thought, and closed her eyes again.

_It's so warm_, she thought, her eyelids sliding shut. She shifted to make sure the blanket was covering all of her, and she felt herself shift against something more solid than a sofa cushion.

Her eyes flew open in shock. Noah. Was here. On her sofa. They had fallen asleep and God knew what time it was. She turned to wake him up and studied the look on his face. He looked…_peaceful_. She had never seen him so relaxed before.

_Nevermind_, she thought and turned her face back towards the TV.

_Better leave it on_, she thought, though she hated to waste the energy. _Better excuse_. She felt herself slipping back towards slumber and pulled the blanket tight across her, though it still didn't quite cover her entirely.

She shivered, and instinctively snuggled backwards against Noah. He was warm and solid behind her, and as she shuddered, he moved his arm over her, pulling her backwards, closer to him.

She settled in against him and felt sleep wash over her once more. She dreamed of football babies and dark auditoriums. She ran through the dark auditorium, following the running-lights of the aisles, but no matter how many times she turned, she couldn't find her way out.

"Rachel, this way," she heard, and she turned to see Finn standing in the spotlight of the stage. "No Rachel, this way," she heard from behind her, and turned to see Noah standing in the lit silhouette of the exit door. She turned back to Finn. He looked so confident and sure, whereas Noah looked uncertain. She looked back and forth between them, trying to figure out which direction to follow. She stared at Finn once more and studied him carefully. She could barely make out the tiniest hint of malice in his eyes. She looked back again to Noah, who stood in the doorway, eyes concerned, hand held out. She turned and walked up the aisle towards him.

"Rachel." She heard. "Rachel, wake up, please." She opened her eyes slightly and saw Noah staring down at her. She was still tucked against his body; he was propped up on one arm with the other still slung over her body.

"Rach, I gotta go," he said. "I think one of your dad's is up." Sure enough, overhead she could hear footsteps and the coffee grinder whirring.

"Okay," she whispered back to him. "What about your shirt?" He was silent for a minute, and Rachel's barely awake brain stuttered into action.

"Go out the back, and I'll lock up. Wait for me by the bush next to the neighbors yard, next to the mailbox," she said. "I'll bring your shirt to you in a few minutes."

He complied and she trudged up the stairs, the blanket wrapped around her like a bathrobe.

"Morning, superstar," her father said to her as she appeared at the top of the basement stairs. "Fall asleep watching a movie?"

"Yes, daddy," she said. "I was doing some laundry and was watching a movie while I waited for it to finish. Guess I fell asleep." She fake yawned and stretched, moving towards the laundry room.

"Make sure it's not all wrinkled," her father called, turning back towards the kitchen.

She raced to the laundry room and yanked the bundle of clothing out of the dryer. She dashed up the stairs and frantically sorted through the pile of clothing until she untangled Noah's shirt. She stuffed it under her t-shirt and wrapped the blanket back around herself.

"I'm going out to get the paper, dad," she called and went out the front door. Noah was waiting just out of view of the front door, next to the bush as instructed.

"Here," she said, removing the bundle from beneath her t-shirt and handing it to him.

"Good thing your dad's didn't see you like that," Noah commented. "They might think you were pregnant." He laughed at the irony of his (lame) joke. His face settled out of his smile and he stepped towards her.

"How can I thank-you?" he asked. "You've saved me 5 times in the last 24 hours. I don't deserve that from you. I can't believe you've done all of this for me." Instead of casting his eyes downward, he stared at her intently. "I don't deserve what you've done for me," he continued.

"Yes, you do," she whispered, and stepped towards him. Clasping his head in her hands, she pulled his head towards hers. While her natural inclination was to press her lips against his, she steadied herself and pressed her lips softly against his forehead. "Yes you do."

Instead of replying he turned and walked up the sidewalk towards his truck. When he got to the driver side door he turned to look at her again, his face a sea of emotions. She watched as he climbed into the truck and started the engine.

From down the street she heard a slight squeal of tires, and she watched as a beat up Volvo sped down the street. The Volvo slowed at the truck, and she saw Noah's face pale. The Volvo picked up its speed and skidded to a halt in front of her driveway.

It seemed as if it was all happening in a flash-forward sequence, everything moving too fast to comprehend. She felt as if she missed certain scenes, certain nuances, certain sentences. She saw the Volvo door open and she watched Finn jump out. She registered her shock and turned towards the truck up the street and saw Noah jumping out of his truck, running towards her.

"Were you in on it, too?" she heard Finn roar and turned towards him. His face was livid with fury and she backed away from him, frightened.

"Hey!" she heard Noah yell, and she squeezed her eyes shut, terrified of what was about to take place. She heard Finn shouting, she felt Noah pulling her backwards, she heard her father's voice, "What's going on here?" and she felt Noah's hand pull violently from her own.

Without his hand in hers, guiding her, she was lost. She opened her eyes to see Noah standing in front of her, blocking her, protecting her. Finn was on the other side of him, his eyes rabid and anger etched into his every feature. She could see that Finn was no longer yelling at her, that he was directing his fury towards Noah.

She watched as Noah calmly responded to Finn, still blocking her, still protecting her. Instinctively she reached in front of her, curling her left hand onto his left shoulder, wrapping her right arm around his stomach.

"Come in," she whispered to him, and he began to back away with her, still facing Finn.

"Why are you here?" she questioned the still-raving Finn. "Why do you care? What did I ever do to you?"

"You knew. You asked me; yesterday in the auditorium. You knew. You _bitch_!" screamed Finn, and he leapt forward, trying to grab her.

Rachel's instinct was to close her eyes but she kept them wide-open out of pure fear.

"I thought I loved you," she whispered, as Noah's fist connected with Finn's face.

* * *

**Additional A/N: The person who comes up with the most creative and constructive review will be given a shout out in the next chapter. I hope that this is a better way to go about this. Woot! One more week until "Wheels!"**


	12. You Love Me Like You Do

**A/N: I had originally intended for this chapter and the previous chapter to be all one chapter, but the length (and the fact that fanfiction wouldn't let me have a title as long as "I Can't Get Over the Way You Love Me Like You Do" kind of convinced me to split it into 2 chapters. Anyway, that's why it's still in Rachel's POV, even though I normally switch back and forth. Also, the shout out I mentioned last chapter will have to be for the next one, because this one was kind of already written. But it will come! I promise! **

**Disclaimer: We've got Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and my big 25 coming up soon. Someone should give me Glee as a token of love.

* * *

**"Noah!" she screamed and lurched forward. "No!"

She had watched as Finn lunged for her, watched as Noah stepped forward to protect her, watched as Noah's fist had connected with Finn's face, and was now watching as Finn threw Noah onto his back on her lawn.

"Finn, please, stop!" she cried. She clutched her blanket to her chest, bending forward and shrieking at him. Across the street she could see Mrs. Owen watering her lawn, the hose frozen in the same position, water flooding the same patch of grass.

She lowered her gaze back to the thrashing mass of boy and noticed that Noah wasn't fighting back. He had thrown the first punch to protect her, to get her out of the way, but he was lying on the ground as he allowed Finn to pummel him mercilessly.

"Finn! Finn, stop!" she raced forward and grabbed at the arm he was using to hold Noah to the ground. He wheeled on her, his arm still pulled back prior to a punch. Her eyes widened in shock and she braced herself for the blow he had intended for Noah.

The blow never came. Her father had come out onto the lawn and had trapped Finn's arm in a steely grip. Her father may be gay, but he was not a "fairy" as some unimaginative middle-schoolers had once taunted her.

"This is all very lovely, children," he said, his words light but his voice cold. "But may I ask, what the _hell_ is going on in my front yard?"

Noah lay flat on the ground, his hands covering his face. Finn seemed to have snapped to his senses when Rachel's father had intruded into his beat-down scenario. Rachel stared up at her father, tears streaming out of her eyes.

"Daddy, I'm sorry," she said.

"Rachel, go inside. Take this young man with you and clean him up while I deal with this one," her father said in a voice that meant he was to be obeyed, no questions asked.

Her father pulled Finn off of Noah and she crouched next him. She lowered her face to his ear and whispered, "Can you stand?"

"Yes," he whispered back through clenched teeth, and she saw that he was crying again. She shielded him from Finn's view with her body, and tugged one of the hands covering his face into her own. Gently, she helped him up and supported him as they made their way into the house.

She guided him up the stairs and into her room. They crossed through the room and entered her bathroom, which was white with pink, silver, and teal accents. She sat him down on the toilet and uncovered the rest of his face.

"Oh, Noah," she whispered, as she took in the damage. His face was bruised, his left eyelid was already swelling shut and his lower lip had split open. He had a cut above his eyebrow and another tear along his right ear. His nose was bleeding, but didn't look broken, and the rest of him was in similar condition. She could see bruises beginning to form around his neck and chest and his body was streaked with blood from the tears in his skin.

He said nothing while she ran the water in her sink and pulled his wife-beater over his head.

"At least you left the button-down in the truck," she said, trying to make a joke. He half-smiled and then winced as the movement tugged at his split lip.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she cried, and said nothing else. She washed away the blood and tidied his wounds. Where she could she bandaged and balmed, but he still looked broken. The entire time she worked, tears slid down her face.

"God dammit I'm tired of making you cry!" Noah half-shouted as she wiped her face with the back of her hand.

"It's not you that made me cry, Noah. How would you feel if the person you thought you could truly love abruptly changed faces, changed sides, changed realities on you, and told you they would never love you? What would you do if that person showed up first thing in the morning the next morning at your house and screamed obscenities at you and seriously injured one of the most important people in your life? What would you do? How would you feel? Why _wouldn't_ you cry?"

He stared at her. "It's still my fault."

"Noah. Puckerman. I have had it up to here" she indicated high above her head "with your guilt-trips and your insistence that everything is your fault. If I didn't know better, it would seem as if you wanted everything to be your fault!"

She watched as her words sunk into him and he slumped forward, placing his hands on her bathroom counter and staring at the tile.

"Rachel… what would you do if every day you woke up wondering whether or not your dad was going to be a good guy or a bad guy? How would you feel if no matter what you did, your dad either hit you or told you he loved you? How would you react if you learned over time that no matter what you did, no matter how you acted, everything was your fault? If he backhanded your mom, it was because you didn't stack the plates right in the cabinet. If he picked your little sister up by her hair, it was because you had failed to keep her quiet while he was napping. If he left, it was because you weren't good enough to be his child… wouldn't you then think that everything was your fault?"

Rachel had knelt in front of him while he spoke, her hands soothingly rubbing the fuzz on top of his head.

"It's not that I want everything to be my fault, Rachel, it's just… 10 years later and I still can't believe that it's not my fault. That's when I started making things my fault on purpose… I threw slushies at you and you cried and I _knew_ that was my fault. It was easier that way. When you knew."

"I know that it's not all my fault, Rachel," he continued, "but Finn showing up on your front lawn first thing in the morning? He didn't come here looking for you. Why would he, after what he said to you yesterday? Finn coming here, period. He wouldn't be coming after you _or_ me if I had just manned up and told him the truth that first day. Shown him the note. Explained what happened. Gathered my witnesses… I didn't. He's here. So partially… it is my fault."

Rachel had listened to his confession in horror. Every time she learned something new about Noah Puckerman, the more she was surprised that he had turned out as well as he had. He had been through hell.

"Noah, I…" she began.

"Don't. Don't say anything right now. Later, if you still need to say something, you can, but just… let it go for now. We have a much bigger problem outside with your father."

"We can handle it," she said, and she took his hand in hers.

They walked down the stairs hand-in-hand and found Finn sitting at the breakfast room table, talking to her fathers. Finn had received none of the TLC that Rachel had bestowed upon Noah, but she could see he hadn't needed any. Besides the initial punch that Noah had thrown at him to distract him, Finn was physically unscathed. Rachel's insides burned at the injustice of it.

"Why are you _here_?" she seethed at him. She clenched her hand around Noah's and walked closer to the breakfast table.

"I never want to see you again. You never want to see me again. You made that much clear when you shouted at me to leave you alone when you ran out of the auditorium. You have played me hot and cold for months, and I have let you because I thought I loved you, and I thought that you loved me, but Finn… this has gone too far. How _dare_ you come to my house and disturb my family? How dare you attack my friends and yell at me?"

She was furious. She had had enough of controlling her anger in front of adults, in front of her classmates, in front of heart rate monitors. She had so much anger in her she was about to explode, and she didn't care that her fathers were there to witness the entire thing.

"I understand that you are going through a lot right now, truly, I do. I get that you are under a lot of stress with the baby and the near miscarriage. I understand that you are under a lot of stress from having all the parents find out about the baby the way they did, and that you are in a lot of pain from finding out the truth about the baby. But _that is no excuse for your actions._"

Finn was gaping at her, and her fathers were staring at her in shock. Noah was still holding her hand, providing the strength she needed to move forward.

"You want to be mad at someone? How about you get mad at the girl that tricked your best friend into getting her pregnant, and then blackmailed him to lie about it for the next few months while she led you to believe that you were the father. How about you get mad about that?"

"He lied to me," Finn said. "We have been best friends since we were 4 years old. I supported him when his dad left and he helped support me and my mom when Darryl left. For _months_ he has had every opportunity to tell me his side of the story, but he kept his mouth shut. Guess the old adage "bros before hoes" isn't true. He chose to stand by her, not by me."

"He chose to stand with his _child_, Finn, just like any good father would do. Wouldn't you? If you were faced with the choice of watching silently from the sidelines, making sure your child was okay, wouldn't you choose that, rather than being totally evicted from her life? I can't believe that, knowing what you know about Noah and his family life, you would believe that he would do anything but choose his child over you. Even you, Finn Hudson, cannot be that stupid," she berated him.

"But you knew," Finn baited her, switching tactics when he realized his attack at Puck had failed.

"No. I didn't know. I was a stupid girl in love," she shot back spitefully.

"Yes, you did! You asked me what I would do if the baby wasn't mine, not hours before I found out that the baby _isn't_ mine. Why would you ask that unless you knew? You were playing me, Rachel."

She sighed, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers to her temples. Of all the things she wished to discuss in front of her fathers, her ridiculous love for Finn Hudson was at the absolute bottom of the list.

"Ever since you joined glee, you've followed me around, Finn. You've asked for help with your voice, we're constantly paired together… you've kissed me, not once, but twice. You were the one to take me out on my first date. Even after I found out about Quinn and the baby, you thanked me for choosing the team, for choosing you over Cabaret, over the chance to be a star. You promised me that you'd make it up to me someday…" her voice trailed off. The hurt she had been pushing back for hours was erupting through her – it had been ever since she'd opened the topic with Noah in her bathroom.

"When you burst into the auditorium yesterday, I was lying on the floor staring at the ceiling, wondering when you would finally realize that you loved me. I was wondering what it would take for you to come to your senses. Then you came in and started talking about Quinn and being confused and… I went with it. I had to know. I had to ask. I thought of the most ridiculous scenario I could put you in, and I asked, easy as that."

She wiped tears from her cheeks. Her fathers had frozen solid in their chairs at the table.

"I never thought you would break my heart. I never thought you would tell me you couldn't and that you _wouldn't_ love me. I wanted you to love me. I wanted to find out the depth of your love for Quinn. I was a glutton for punishment, sure, but I never knew the truth about the baby. Not until after Quinn was in the hospital."

She finished her spiel and glared at him, daring him with her eyes to fight back. Instead of saying anything, he pushed himself back from the table and walked around the chairs. He moved towards her and Noah moved in front of her to shield her.

"Please… I'm not going to do anything to her," Finn said. Silently, Noah moved 4 inches to his right and stood statue-still by her side, her hand still clenching his.

"I'm sorry, Rachel," Finn said. He looked around the room. "I'm sorry for causing a scene, Mr. Berry, and um… Mr. Berry."

Finally he looked up at Puck. He seemed to struggle with himself for a minute, trying to put the words together. "I'm sorry about your face," he managed, and then he let himself out the front door.

Rachel turned back to her fathers and saw all of the questions in their eyes.

"Please." She stopped them. "I just admitted more in front of you than any teenage girl had ever admitted to her father. Please just accept that for now. I promise I'll answer all of your questions later, but right now, I'm tired. I'm going to go sleep in my own bed."

She turned away from her fathers and walked towards the stairs, pulling Noah behind her.

"Um, Rach?" he asked her as they began the ascent to her room. "Are you sure this is okay with your dads?"

"It doesn't matter," she said, continuing up the stairs. "I want to sleep, and I want to know I'm safe. I want you there, especially after all of this. I want to make sure you're safe, too."

"Go ahead," one of her fathers called from the breakfast room. "We know you won't hurt her, son. Not after the bravery you just displayed."

Rachel reached the top of the stairs and pulled him into her room. She stripped the sheets back on her bed and snuggled down into them, all the while keeping her eyes on Noah.

He stood still in the center of her room, as if unsure as to what to do.

"Where do you want me to…?" he asked.

"In here. With me," she whispered, and pulled back the sheets on the other side of the bed.

He sat on the edge of her bed and pulled off his shoes. "Is it okay if I… take off my pants? I have boxers on," he continued hurriedly. "I just can't sleep in my jeans. They get all tangled up in the sheets."

"Come on," she said, and rolled over to give him some privacy. She heard the whisper of his jeans as they slid down his legs and onto the floor. She felt the bed bounce slightly as he climbed into it, and then his warmth as he slid down next to her.

She burrowed back against him the same way she had done on the sofa and pulled his arm over her body.

"Sleep, now," she whispered. "Everything will be okay."

"I know," he whispered and pulled her tighter to him. She fell asleep in the warm cocoon of his embrace, drifting off to dreams of football babies and musicals.


	13. But I Have to Be Sure

**A/N: This chapter was a bitch and a half to write - there was so much to include that has to happen so that what happens next will plausibly happen... so exhausting. But, the chapter is up, and the shout-outs are in - hope you spot them! Additionally, thank-you to everyone who has added me and my story to their alerts, and love to all who have commented. There were so many wonderful critiques that I have a couple of people to include in shout-outs who didn't get them this chapter, but I'll try to put them into it in later ones. Thanks for the love!**

**Disclaimer: I want to own Glee... I want to own Gleeeeee....

* * *

**He was having such a good dream. It was warm and he was happy. His daughter was bouncing on his lap, clapping her hands excitedly at the picture on the TV screen. "Mama!" she cried, and he looked at the screen and smiled.

"That's right, that's Mama," he lovingly said to her, and smiled at the screen. Walking across the stage in an evening gown with an envelope in her hand, Rachel stepped up to the microphone and began to present the award for Best Male Breakthrough Artist. He watched as she ripped open the envelope. And then ripped it open again. And again… what?

He opened his eyes. Rachel was standing in front of her dresser, tearing something into tiny pieces. He watched her quietly, drinking in her reflection in the mirror. Her face was hardened, determined, but there was a softness and vulnerability in it that made him want to protect her.

He shifted to see her better, and she turned at the rustle of the sheets.

"Hey, sleepyhead," she smiled at him, attempting to hide the torn fragments of paper behind her back.

"Watcha tearing?" he asked as he yawned.

Guiltily, she picked up the pile of scraps and dropped them onto the bed. They fluttered down and he could see that they had once been pictures of her and Finn performing, at Glee practice, at the bowling alley…

"He doesn't deserve you," Noah said, looking into Rachel's eyes.

"I'm telling you, I think it's your mission to make me cry. Isn't it?" she half-laughed as she wiped a single tear off of her cheek.

"No. That was his job. I promised to try to never hurt you again, remember?" he asked, wincing as he propped himself up on the bed. He decided to change the subject before it became too deep – things had been going that way with Rachel a lot lately – too deep, too fast.

"Do I look as wrecked as I feel?" he asked her.

"Umm…" she hesitated. "How do you feel?"

He laughed, and even though his lip split open, he didn't care. She had made him smile.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Almost 2 o'clock," she replied, smiling guiltily. "I didn't want to wake you up. You looked like you were having a good dream."

"I was," he replied, and continued internally, _it's almost as if I was sleeping longer just to dream about you._

"I have to go," he said regretfully. "My mom will be worried, and… Quinn said I could come back today. Since she hasn't told me that that's changed, I'm going to go."

"But…" she began, and he cut her off. "Don't worry, I won't get into any trouble."

"Noah Puckerman, for you that's a lot easier said than done," she said, and handed him his jeans. "I'll give you some privacy," she said, and turned to walk out of the room. As she shut the door behind her, he could swear that he saw her eye his exposed chest appreciatively, despite the bruising.

_Interesting_, he thought, as he pushed himself out of the bed and hoisted his jeans onto his hips. _Very interesting_.

He said good-bye to Rachel and her fathers, thanking them for their hospitality. True to form, he could see that Rachel had already spilled the beans about the entire incident. His thoughts were further confirmed when one of her fathers (_which one?_ He thought. _I've never been introduced_) said, "We're proud of you, you know. Every father should stand up for his little girl."

When he said good-bye to her, instead of a one-armed hug he pulled her close to him and felt her warmth seep into his bones.

"Call me if anything happens," she whispered to him.

"Anything anywhere?" he joked, "or just if anything happens to me?" He smirked and he saw a smile ghost across her face before she settled back into her more serious mode.

"Just call," she said, and he almost didn't leave. But his mom and his daughter were waiting…

He checked in with his mom, and in a fit of Rachel-ness, spilled out the whole story to her while she stoically sat in a kitchen chair. He knelt in front of her, he paced around the room, gesturing with his hands, and finally sat down backwards in a kitchen chair in front of her.

"Can you forgive me?" he asked her.

"This girl you spent the night with," his mother began, "is she Jewish?"

"Yes, mom," he replied, bracing himself for an onslaught of questions.

"Okay, then," she said, but the look she gave him glowed with pride for her son's actions. After his father had left his mom had become a woman of fewer words (fewer than the little she said before, anyway) and conveyed her thoughts with one-liners and looks. He knew she was proud of the way he was handling the situation. Not proud that he had impregnated a girl as a teenager, but… proud that he had stepped up to the plate, to do the right thing. He could see in her eyes that he was moving away from the Puck she knew and learning to be Noah. The thought terrified him.

The fear and the knowledge that he was changing stayed with him as he drove to the hospital. He had yet to hear from Quinn, and after Finn's rage-incident (who knew he had it in him?) this morning, Finn had been MIA. He approached the door to the room, which was partially open.

"Hello?" he called as he knocked.

"Another well-wisher," a woman commented, and as he pushed the door open farther, he could see that Quinn was in the room with a nurse.

"Actually…" Quinn began, but then stopped, blushing.

"I'm the father," Noah finished for her, his voice bursting with pride.

"Oh, I see," the nurse responded, confused. _Wasn't there another boy with a fishy sounding name that also claimed to be the father_?

"Well, dad," she continued as if nothing strange had occurred to her. "This little girl seems to be pulling right along; there's a much stronger heartbeat after the scare she gave us yesterday. If you or Mom need anything, just call the nurses station and ask for Nurse Hanaan. I'll be right in." With that she left the room, and Noah was alone with Quinn.

She looked much healthier and much brighter than she had the day before. She also looked lighter, as if an immense burden had been released from her body. He walked towards her and her eyes widened in shock.

"Puck! What happened to you?" she cried, pushing herself up on the bed pillows.

"Your boyfriend, that's what…" he said, speaking lightly, as if it were nothing.

"Finn… he would never…he wouldn't… how did he?" Quinn seemed at a loss to explain the situation, and Noah almost laughed out loud.

"Quinn, he would, he did, and why wouldn't he? The thing was, he cornered me at Rachel's, and when he started shouting at her and leapt at her like he was going to grab her and shake her… I wasn't about to let that happen." He had attempted to keep things light, but by the time he had finished speaking, his voice was almost a growl.

"Oh, no!" Quinn exclaimed. "Is Rachel okay?" _WTF? _Puck thought as Quinn continued, "did you hurt Finn? Where is he?"

_Of course_, he thought_, defend him._ He had known she would never love him, and would always love Finn, but he didn't understand why she leapt to his defense after finding out that not only had Finn attacked him, but that he had nearly attacked a woman. _Crazy_, he thought.

"I don't know," he said out loud. "But no, I didn't hurt Finn. I hit him once in the face to distract him from Rachel, and then let him take out his anger on me. After he apologized to Rachel's dads, he left."

"Rachel's _dads_?" Quinn squeaked. "Do they _know_?" she asked.

"You mean the truth? Yeah, they know. They did witness a brawl in their front yard over the paternity of this baby. So does my mom. I figured if I'm coming home with bruises and band-aids all over me, she has a right to know why." _Duh_.

"But… they'll tell my parents!" Quinn exclaimed.

"Quinn, I think the cat is pretty much out of the bag at this point – Mr. Schuester knows, Finn knows, and Rachel knows. I doubt that keeping her dads or my mom in the dark at this point would do you any good," he reasoned with her.

"Oh. My. God!" Quinn exclaimed. "We said we weren't going to tell anyone yet! That it was too soon, that we were going to work out a _plan_!"

"Well that plan got shot down when Mr. Schue blew it out of the stratosphere, not to mention when your boyfriend chose a public place to have a complete meltdown about it. Why do you think I'm here, Quinn? Because I hoped to run into Finn again and relive this morning? Not a chance. I'm here for 2 reasons: number 1 is to be with my little girl. Number 2 is to make sure that we can take your "plan" and modify it for the situation." He was getting frustrated, and he could feel the Puck in him starting to take over.

_Simmer,_ he sternly told that side of himself. He was so over the drama…

"The plan can't be modified, Puck! The plan was always going to be to give her up for adoption! I can't raise a baby, I don't want to lose my life – and she deserves a life of her own, with good people. Yes, I told you we would tell people, but I meant like, _glee_ people, not people people! People who would understand and support all 3 of us – you, me, and Finn, when we gave her to her new parents. Not _adults!_" she yelled at him.

"What if that's not what I want, huh? What if I want to be there for her? What if I want to be her dad, like you said I could?" he shot back at her.

"I lied," she replied, her face stony. "I didn't want anymore drama yesterday. I figured we could sort it all out and that I could convince you to see the logic behind my decision before you did anything stupid! But then you went ahead and did it anyway! God!"

His head was reeling – all of this back and forth over the father – no father issue, and the fighting and the fear and the drama and Finn attacking him this morning and the smell of Rachel's hair when he had woken up on the sofa this morning and the way she had nestled her tiny little body into his in the bed after the fight – it was too much to bear. He simply couldn't fathom it all, couldn't make it make sense. There was no order, no rhyme, no reason.

He moved as if on autopilot and approached the hospital bed where Quinn was glaring at him furiously. He reached out his hand and settled it on her stomach, hearing and not hearing her indignant gasp.

"I love you," he said, and stroked her stomach once. He was overcome with emotion, having just touched his child and spoken to her for the first time. He autopiloted himself back to the door and looked back at a shocked Quinn.

"I'm getting a lawyer," he said. "I don't know why you'd think I would do anything differently," and he walked out of the room, the door clicking shut behind him.

"Leaving so soon, Dad?" Nurse Hanaan called as he passed the nurses station. He ignored her. He didn't know what he would say.

"So it's true?" he heard someone ask, and he turned his head. _Christ_, he swore, _what the fuck else can possibly happen to me that _doesn't_ involve drama today? _

"Yes, Mrs. Hudson," he informed her, his head held high. He might not be proud of the way it happened, but he was proud of his paternity. _Proud enough to sue for it_ he thought.

"How could you?" she asked him, her eyes glistening with tears. "How could you do this to my son? You're like brothers…how could you do this to him? How could you do this to me – you're like my second son!"

"Mrs. Hudson, believe me, I did none of this intentionally," he attempted to placate her. "I don't know what you've heard, what Finn has told you, but Quinn should tell you the truth. Even if she doesn't, Mr. Schuester, or Rachel, or I will."

"I never meant to hurt anyone," he continued, "especially you. You've been one of the best mothers someone could ever ask for – to me, to my sister. I can't tell you the whole story now, and I want to, because I want you to know the truth, but know this," he said, feeling a burst of inspiration. _I can resolve this_, he thought. _I don't have to hurt her – she doesn't deserve that hurt._

"If I get what I want, and the lawyers grant me paternal custody, I promise you that you will still be a grandmother to her, if you want to be," he said, and then pulled her into a forced hug.

It wasn't odd for him to drop his Puck façade around her – she had held him when he had cried after his father had left, she had helped him to grow up and to raise his sister. She knew a side of him that most people – Finn somewhat included – had never seen before.

"I have to go," he said, and released her. "Know that I'm sorry. Know that she can still be yours, too."

He walked away from her, and as he turned to face the front of the elevator, he could see her staring at him in shock across the hospital floor.

_What else can happen_? he asked himself wearily. _Next, Finn will be standing in front of the elevators when I get off and will deck me again_. He sighed, knowing that his thoughts were not too far from being realistic.

Thankfully, when he emerged from the elevator he was alone. He walked to the parking lot and sat in his truck, staring at the steering wheel. _What the FUCK did I just do?_ he asked himself in a moment of panic.

He knew he was only 16. He knew that he had next to no money, no housing for a baby, and the only thing that he had going for him was that he had a pool business that brought him some cash – seasonally.

_I can't give her what she deserves!_ he screamed at himself. _I'm a fucking idiot! _

As his mind tried to logically talk himself out of his decision, another part of him fought back even harder – his heart. He reviewed everything he wanted to teach his little girl, everything he hoped to tell her, all of the brief, shining daydreams of what life would be like with her – including his dream from this morning. He knew that he would be lost if she was not a part of his life – she already exerted a pull on him that was almost gravitational.

For what seemed like the hundredth time in recent memory, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the now familiar number.

"I need a good lawyer," he greeted her, and launched into his story, listening to Rachel jump into action, speaking at high speed.

He put the truck into gear and drove off, his cell phone pressed to his ear and his mind on his baby, tucked into the womb of the woman who would keep him away and who didn't want to keep her.

_I'm fighting_, he assured her. _Don't worry. Daddy's going to make sure you're safe._


	14. When I Walk Out that Door

**A/N: Oh my gosh, this chapter is so long! It had so much to be put in it, otherwise the pace and the story won't work. I'm kinda nervous about the next couple of chapters - there's some MAJOR stuff coming, and I'm not sure whether you'll love it or hate it. Either way, I'll write it and you'll let me know. Please read and review!**

**Disclaimer: Same old, same old.

* * *

**They were a team. Noah had driven to her house at top speed, shouting a, "Hey, Mr. Berry… Mr. Berry!" as he throttled up the stairs to her room. They had stayed on her bed for hours, poring over print-outs, her computer, and some law books that she had checked out of the library that afternoon.

"What?" she had asked him innocently. "It never hurts to be prepared."

She smiled when he laughed, and they went back to going over the reading material, making lists and compiling notes. They spent the rest of the weekend in the same fashion, sometimes changing their location when Noah needed to be home to watch his sister. After 2 days she found herself settling into a pattern that felt natural to her, and felt almost at home in Noah's house; although he still wouldn't let her meet his mother.

Going back to school that Monday had been awkward – Noah had shown up at Rachel's house early so that they could go over what they had each managed to dig up overnight, and then he had given her a ride to school. When she had stepped out of his truck in the parking lot (fell out was a lot more like it) she had seen everyone in the vicinity stop and stare at her. _Well, it's not like they haven't seen it before_, she thought, and had walked with Noah into the school building.

No one slushied her anymore. No one taunted her anymore. In fact… almost no one said anything to her anymore, except the glee kids. Even they were unsure of what to say, though, so she expected that they were just keeping their distance until the other shoe dropped.

Quinn was still in the hospital, but Finn had returned to school that Monday, too. She and Noah had kept an eye out for him as they passed through the corridors, and when they walked into the glee room (Noah trembling, Rachel half-pushing him through the doorway) they both expected Finn to erupt as he had done the other morning.

No eruption came. As it was, Finn had adopted a stony silence towards everyone, and curtly answered all questions about the baby and Quinn. He was sticking to what he had told Rachel he would do; however, and was still with Quinn and still pretending the baby was his. She and Noah had decided that for the time being, a don't ask/don't tell policy was the best policy to be adopted.

Mr. Schuester had seemed to come (slightly) to his senses and realized that he had had no right to start to open that can of worms. As it was, he looked neither Finn nor Noah in the eye and spoke only to Rachel.

The days passed by, and though Quinn returned to school, news of a "scandal" did not break. Every time she entered the room she looked pointedly away from Noah and Rachel and maintained her distance. Despite her cold shoulder, she sent Rachel text messages updating her on the baby. She seemed to think Rachel was an acceptable middle-man for dealing with the true father of her child.

Weeks passed and their piles of research mounted up and Rachel stopped hearing rumors that she was sleeping with Puck to make Finn jealous. Instead, their togetherness was viewed as commonplace. Even the glee kids viewed them as a team – pick one and the other comes with. Kind of like a buy-one, get one free.

She and Noah were currently sitting on her bed doing homework. She had finished her essay for English 20 minutes prior, and had been rifling through their notes when she shoved the stack of papers away from her and said, "Enough."

Startled, Noah looked up at her. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Can't come up with a good enough conclusion, Berry?" He was teasing her.

"No, I finished that a while ago. My brain powers are exceptional, and uh… I typed my rough draft out last night after I left your house, so I didn't have too much to do today," she concluded.

"But, no," she picked-up again, "enough. We have done weeks worth of research. We have pored over dozens of law texts and paternity case precedents. We have documented everything, listed every witness, and made notations of everything we possibly could have noted. It's time."

She could see that he was hesitant to move forward – going to the lawyer they had decided upon made it really _real_. Scary real. The threat of the lawyer and the research they had been doing was all well and good, but Quinn was getting bigger every day, and she was just as determined to give the baby up for adoption as she had been when Noah had last spoken to her face-to-face.

"You're right, it's time," he agreed with her, and closed his textbook.

"Should I make an appointment for us tomorrow?" she queried.

"Rachel," he began slowly, "I think it would be best if, at least for the initial meeting, I went to the lawyer…alone."

She tried to hide the hurt that she felt at his words – _what about the team?_ – but she knew she was unsuccessful when he immediately scooted towards her and took her hand into his. She immediately felt the little _zing_ that popped through her whenever they made physical contact, but once again, she pushed it away. That was over. It was different now.

"Just because if we go together, the lawyer may look at it as if _we_ are trying to win this custody case – which we are – but _we_ as a couple, not _we_ as a team. And…"she watched him run his fingers through his peach-fuzzy hair (he had started growing it out in an effort to look "more mature") "I think that this is one step that I need to take on my own."

"Oh," she said softly, her eyes focused on the piles of papers they had compiled.

"Well, of course you're right," she said brightly. "You should take this step on your own. It will show you in a positive light; that you, and truly you, are dedicated to becoming a good father. That that is your first, and only goal with this lawsuit. To be a good father to your daughter."

"Do you really mean that, or are you just saying that to make the situation easier?" he asked her, and it was hard for her to lie.

"Of course I mean it, Noah," she said and thrust a piece of paper at him. "Call tomorrow, first thing. Book the first appointment available. Don't lose that paper!" she admonished him.

"Rach…" he whispered, and this time it was his turn to speak softly. "I was kinda hoping that I could call tomorrow morning before we go into school. Before we get out of the truck. I need you…r support," he stuttered.

She tried not to linger over the fact that he had nearly said "you" and not "your support." "Of course I'll be there to support you," she said. "Now finish your homework."

The next morning he made the phone call and, true to her word, she sat beside him in the truck, her hand resting on his arm. When he hung up, he turned and grinned at her.

"They have availability this afternoon. I can't believe I'm actually doing this!" he said, and she could tell that he was elated and scared at the same time.

"You're actually doing this," she repeated, and wondered why she felt odd about using the word "you."

"I'll come over right after the meeting," he said to her as they got out of the truck.

"Aren't you going to take me home?" she asked him, surprised.

"Well, the appointment's at 4, and school doesn't get out until 3:30, and you know there's always a jam in the parking lot, and you won't skip AP Lit no matter how many times I try to convince you it's okay, so…" he trailed off.

"I guess I need to find a ride," she finished for him, and they spent the rest of the walk into school in silence.

Throughout the day she queried her friends as to who could drive her home after school – surprisingly, everyone seemed to be busy. Even Mr. Schue had an appointment at the obstetrician with his wife, and was unable to drive her.

"I can drive you," she heard from behind her as Tina finished stuttering her apology about having to baby-sit.

They were the first words he had spoken to her in weeks. "What?" she said, whirling around to look at him.

"I can drive you home, if you need a ride," Finn repeated. "I kind of…owe you after what happened. I wanted to apologize for my…behavior."

Rachel stood still in shock as she processed his words. The last time they had spoken had been so heated, and even though they had evoked some semblance of a cease-fire since the "incident" as she, her dads, and Noah had come to refer to it, they were nowhere close to achieving détente.

She felt, rather than saw, Noah's gaze shift towards her down the hallway. Almost instantly, he was at her side.

"Is there a problem?" she heard him growl, and she almost giggled at how ferocious he sounded protecting her.

"Finn just offered to give me a ride home from school," she told him, sharing her thoughts with him through her eyes.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea, Hudson. The last time you were outside school grounds with her, you almost hit her. I don't know if you can control yourself well enough to drive her safely home."

Rachel could feel the testosterone levels rising, and she knew that she had to exert some modicum of control over Noah so that he didn't revert to "Puck" and potentially impair his lawsuit.

"It's okay," she said quickly, stepping between the two boys. "Finn wants to apologize. He will drive, I will listen, I will get out of the car, and he will leave. I will be safe. He will not hurt me. _Will you._" she warned Finn.

"I'll meet you at your car, Finn. I remember which one it is. It's hard to block out the images," she slung a barb at him. "Now come on, Noah, we're going to be late for class," she said, and grabbed his hand, towing him away from Finn.

"Yes, come on, _Noah_," she heard Finn sneer behind her, "you of all people don't want to be late to _class_." She tightened her grip on Noah's hand and tugged him harder against the sea of students.

"Do _not_ let him get to you. Do _not_ ruin your focus. He is _worthless_. And furthermore, do _not_ worry about me. I know what I'm doing, and, let's face it, I have no other options. I can take care of myself," she breathed to him as they wound their way down the hallways.

"If he lays even _one finger_ on you, or harms you in any way, so help me God, I will kill him," Noah said, and ran his fingers through his stubble.

"He won't. Now focus!" she commanded him, and steered him into the classroom.

She was worried, but she knew she couldn't let Noah see that. She expected that he probably saw through her tough act, but she also knew that this afternoon was too important to jeopardize over an issue as trivial as a ride home. He had to remain confident. He had to convince the lawyer that he had a case.

She fretted over him for the rest of the day, making sure he ate lunch and had all of his notes and precedents and paperwork. Anytime he tried to broach the subject of her car ride with Finn, she steered him back into safer waters. As the school day came to a close, she walked with him out to his truck.

"Good luck," she said, and pulled him into a fierce hug. "You'll be wonderful. It will go well, you'll see."

"Maybe this time…" he half-sang at her, and she grinned.

"You'll win," she replied and hugged him again. "Now, go! You'll be late!" She shut the truck door and watched as he pulled out of the parking lot. Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she opened it to reveal a text. It read, "Be safe."

Sighing, she walked towards the beat-up Volvo that had brought drama to her household. Finn was leaning against the trunk, waiting for her.

"Where's Quinn?" she asked him; she had expected to have a buffer between the two of them for the car ride home.

"She had a doctor's appointment this afternoon. Her mom picked her up, and then they're going to go get maternity clothes. Hers apparently aren't "in vogue" enough," he joked.

"Why couldn't Puck give you a ride home?" he continued as he got into the car.

"He had an appointment with his sister that he forgot about until we got to school," she replied. They had worked out a believable excuse because they wanted the lawsuit to be a surprise to Quinn. They knew that she probably thought Noah had just been bluffing when he mentioned a lawyer, seeing as how nothing had happened in weeks.

"Huh," Finn grunted. She strapped herself into the seat and settled back, feeling highly anxious about the situation. She decided that the best way to get through it was to play a role, and not let Finn ever get the upper hand.

"You wanted to apologize. So apologize," she said sternly. As he opened his mouth she tuned out his blather – there was nothing he could say to her that would fix what had happened between them. While she truly believed that he had just reached a mental snapping point that day, and that he wouldn't have actually hit her if her father hadn't stopped him, enough had broken between them that could never be repaired.

The streets passed by her and she felt herself instinctually tune-in when she heard the word, "lawyer."

"What? Repeat that?" she requested, unsure of what he had said.

"I said, I'm glad that Puck decided against his decision to get a lawyer, because we all know how well that would work out."

"Oh yeah?" she questioned, "how would that work out?"

"He'd lose," Finn stated bluntly. "He's Puck. Who in their right mind would ever give him a child?"

"Your misconception of Noah Puckerman is astounding, Finn, and what's more astounding is the fact that you think that _you_ are more highly qualified to be a father than he is, when you're dumber than a box of _rocks!_" she finished vehemently.

They had pulled into her driveway while she had shouted at him. Now that she realized she was home, she angrily unclicked the seatbelt and got out of the car.

"And once again, we have reached an impasse, and I must, once again, remind you that I never wish to speak to you again." She had a burst of Puck-ish inspiration, and (in a very un-Rachel fashion) leaned forward towards the open window and said, "Fuck. You." With that, she diva-turned and tossed her hair over her shoulder and strutted towards her front door.

After she let herself in, she leaned her back against the door, feeling a wave of euphoria rush over her. Ha! She had successfully defended Noah, defended herself, ridiculed Finn, and had not managed to spill the beans about the lawyer, all in the same 10 minute car trip. _Suck on that, Finn Hudson_, she thought, and beamed at her Puck impersonation.

_I'm damn good_, she thought, and went upstairs to start her homework and wait for Noah to arrive.

She was so absorbed in her math book that she didn't hear him pull in. When the front door opened (he had his own key now, he was there so much), she leapt up from her bed and raced down the stairs. She ran towards him and threw herself into a hug.

"How did it go?" she asked, searching his face for an unspoken response.

"It went…pretty well," he breathed at her, clutching her into a hug. "I was terrified going in there, and I was wishing I had brought you with me so that you could push me through the doorway, but then I just thought of how happy I'll be when my little girl comes home with me and… I walked in."

He told her about the case that he had presented to the lawyer, and how the lawyer had responded to all of the information they had gathered. "He said we have a very good chance of winning," Noah said, his grin faltering. "There's just one problem."

"What problem?" she asked as she walked into the kitchen. She knew that he would be hungry after such a long break after lunch.

"We have to find out if Quinn entered into any sort of legal agreement with the people she wants to adopt the baby. If she did, we have to find out if she entered into that agreement before or after I was informed of her pregnancy and my paternity. If she didn't, then the case is stronger," he stated as he rummaged through the refrigerator.

"But we don't know who those people are!" Rachel cried, dropping the spoon she was holding back into the silverware drawer. "And without being completely obvious, we can't find that out from Quinn!"

"Ah, young padawan," Noah smiled, removing a tub of ice cream from the freezer. "You are yet young in the ways of being sneaky – we shall achieve what we desire," he continued goofily.

She was so happy that he was pleased with the way things had gone – he seemed buoyed with optimism and she loved that he was teasing and joking with her. Even more, she realized, she loved that he was back to using "we" instead of "I."

"So, what, we're going to stalk her now? That will be a change from the 'Avoid at All Costs' plan of action we have in place. Teach me, Jedi Master," she teased back.

And so he did. They watched Quinn at school; they watched her go home. They watched her house from the park across the street; they watched her go to, and come from, her obstetrician appointments. They watched her shop, they watched her eat, they watched her all the time, waiting for her to meet with the people that were better parents for Noah's daughter than himself.

Rachel was trained in the Jedi ways of spying and hacking. She managed to con Jacob Ben Israel into hacking Quinn's passwords, and they spent days poring through her emails, but they found nothing, and saw nothing, that indicated that Quinn had ever made any contact with any adoption agency or anyone interested in adopting a baby. They were beginning to reach the end of their rope when Quinn had to leave rehearsal to pee, and Rachel was sitting right next to her purse.

Deftly, without even thinking about it, she snagged Quinn's cell phone from her open purse and slipped it into her own. No one noticed, not even Noah; they were all paying attention to Mr. Schue.

That night, they scrolled through Quinn's contact list and call logs, but found nothing of note. It wasn't until they got to her text messages that they hit pay dirt. Someone Quinn referred to as "TS" only was asking for an update on the baby, and confirming the next drop date for sonogram pictures. It was the next day.

They waited at the drop point attempting to be as inconspicuous as possible in Noah's mother's car. They saw Quinn walk into a maternity store with her mother, and then emerge an hour later with four shopping bags. When Quinn and her mother went to get into the car, Quinn discretely placed one of the shopping bags on the ground outside her mother's field of vision. They watched as their car pulled out of the parking space, and waited, camera trained on the shopping bag.

They didn't have to wait very long. A blonde-haired woman got out of the car parked next to the now-empty space and bent down to retrieve the bag. As she stood up, they got a clear shot of her face and Rachel gasped out loud. Noah swore, loudly.

"Mrs. Schuester, Quinn? Really? I mean, I can understand thinking that Mr. Schue would be a better father than me, really, I do, but you think that the woman who handed us uppers is a more qualified parent?" Rachel stood back and watched as Noah confronted Quinn in the glee room before school.

Rachel had cornered Quinn in the hallway and practically dragged her into the room (gently, of course, given her condition). Once inside, Noah had cornered her and begun his tirade.

"She's faking a pregnancy, Quinn! She's deceiving a man who has been there for you during some really hard times, and is one of the only people to truly believe in you. And you're helping her lie to him about a baby?" Rachel shook her head in disgust as she watched Quinn attempt to explain the situation.

"No! Forget it! You can't just explain it away – it's bad enough that you lied to everyone about me. I can't let you lie to Mr. Schue about this. I won't let you. I won't let you help his wife convince him that she's pregnant when she's not," he stopped abruptly.

Rachel looked at Quinn worriedly – was there another issue with the baby? What had happened? She saw Quinn's eyes fill with tears and she gasped out the words, "I'm sorry," but she didn't appear to be directing them at Noah.

Rachel followed her eye-line and turned around. Standing in the doorway, having witnessed the last part of the conversation, was Mr. Schuester, his face a mask of shock and pain.


	15. Oh How I Want to be Free, Baby

**A/N: Sorry it's such a short chapter, but I had to cut if off here, otherwise it sort of ruins the next chapter. The next one is longer, I promise. I hope that you enjoy it; there's going to be some crazy drama over the next few chapters that might make you hate me. Please keep reading, and keep reviewing!**

**Disclaimer: Still nothing.

* * *

**Noah turned around and saw Mr. Schuester standing in the doorway. Quinn left the room in tears; brushing by Mr. Schue on her way out. He held up his left hand as if to stop her, but let it drop back to his side with a sigh of exasperation and disbelief. Noah watched as Mr. Schue turned to look at Quinn's retreating back, then to Rachel's stunned face, and finally, for the first time in months, into his own eyes.

When their eyes met, Noah could completely understand the pain that Will Schuester was in. He saw every fragment of heartbreak that the man was experiencing, and knew that he felt exactly the same as he had felt when he had found out that Quinn had lied about the baby.

"Are you sure?" Mr. Schuester asked him, and though he wanted to deny it, he let out a long sigh and said, "We have pictures. I'm sorry, Mr. Schue."

"How long have you known?" Mr. Schue asked him, nerves shot.

"Only since last night, we cornered her first thing this morning," he replied. In a way, he felt an odd sense of vindication in knowing that while Mr. Schue had busted their secret, Noah had just busted his. The odd thrill this gave him weirded him out, and he realized he was thinking like Puck, not Noah.

"You, too, Rachel?" Mr. Schuester turned to look at her, and it was then that Noah really took in the look on her face – she looked shocked and in pain and disgusted and compassionate all at the same time. She was horrified. It was her horrified expression that wiped the last trace of thrill out of his mind. Rachel's facial expression and Mr. Schue's dead eyes did everything to erase his Puck-ish behavior. How could he possibly find that even slightly amusing?

"Yes, Mr. Schue," he heard Rachel shakily reply, and he wanted to round on Mr. Schue and tell him off for scaring her like that. She wouldn't have been able to hold something like that back; she was too good, too honest, and a total glee suck-up.

Mr. Schue ran his hands through his hair and closed his eyes. "May I have the pictures?" he asked.

"S-sure," Rachel said, and handed over a set of copies. When the photos were in his hands, Mr. Schue turned from them without a word and walked back to the hallway. As he was about to enter the student fray, he turned to them and said, "Glee practice is cancelled."

Noah watched Mr. Schue walk away and immediately felt a fresh wave of pain pass over him. He heard Rachel sniffle and he turned to her and took her into his arms.

"Hey, hey," he whispered to her, breathing in the scent of her hair. "It's going to be okay. It's okay," he said, as he rubbed her back.

"I just feel so _awful_" she said, burying her face in his chest. "I _hate_ that he had to find out that way. I hate that his awful wife put him and us in this position. I hate that Quinn ever went along with the idea in the first place!"

He listened to her tirade while feeling her quiver with anger beneath him. Her hot tears were soaking through his shirt, and he felt a shiver run through him when she pushed her face farther into his chest. _Her anger was so _just_ and true_ he thought. She's so loyal, so moral… I envy that about her.

WTF? he thought, and pulled his mind back to reality.

"C'mon," he told her. "We've got to go to school and act like everything is pretty much normal for Mr. Schue's sake. And we've got to tell everyone that there's no glee practice after school. We've got a lot of ground to cover, Berry," he said seriously.

Though he went through the motions of walking to class and sitting at the lunch table, Noah wasn't really there. Sure, he was physically there, but his mind was far away, locked on the pained face of Will Schuester. When school ended for the day he walked out to his truck and saw Rachel leaning against it.

Without saying anything to each other they got into the truck and sat in silence most of the way back to Rachel's house.

"I know you feel bad," Rachel began at the same time he said, "I know this is hard." They shuffled through the "you go first, no, you" dance with Rachel coming out on top.

"I know you feel bad about what happened, and how Mr. Schue found out," Rachel said. "Especially since you're all tied up in this. And I know somewhere inside of you you are thinking that this is your fault, but it's not, and I want to be absolutely firm about that. This. Isn't. Your. Fault." she hurried the words out of her mouth.

"I do think part of it is my fault," he began, "but only a small part. We should have chosen a better place and a better time. But what happened in there was not my fault. I know I didn't put him into that situation. I, do, however," he paused, "I need to make it right. I need to talk to Mr. Schue on a man-to-man level. Because I've been in the pit of despair that he's in. And I feel partially responsible for putting him there. So I'm going to go talk to him," he concluded.

"Man-to-man?" Rachel teased at him, and he could tell she was trying to make the situation lighter, so that he didn't take as much of the blame into himself. To be honest, he wasn't placing the blame upon himself. His time with Rachel had helped to show him that he wasn't always at fault, and that he didn't have to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Yes, Rach, man-to-man," he smiled back at her, inviting her to believe that her attempt at levity had worked.

"Okay," she replied, and she smiled at him, but he could see the whisper of sadness that crossed her face, and he knew that she would miss his presence today.

"I'll come back after I talk to him, okay? My sister's at a friend's house tonight, so I don't have to be home early tonight," he reassured her.

"Okay," she said, and the smile that graced her face this time was real.

He hugged her good-bye and then headed towards Mr. Schue's apartment. He knew where the teacher lived because he had a standing summer contract to clean the apartment pool, and had seen Mr. Schue there once before he had joined glee.

He got out of his truck and looked at the apartment windows. Most of the windows were black, but a single light was on in the dining room of the apartment. He could see Mr. Schue sitting there alone at the dining room table, a bottle of beer in front of him.

He knocked on the door, and when Mr. Schue answered, he could tell that he was the last person Mr. Schue had expected to grace his doorstep.

"Puck? Why are you here?" Mr. Schue queried him.

Noah was suddenly uncomfortable and knew that at least part of it stemmed from being called by the name Puck – it didn't seem to fit him anymore.

"I needed to talk to you, Mr. Schue. And I wanted to make sure that you were okay," Noah told him.

"Thanks, Puck, but I'm fine," Mr. Schue said and began to retreat back into his apartment.

"See, you're not fine, Mr. Schue, and that's a problem for me," he told the retreating figure. Mr. Schue paused with his back still facing him. He was still for a long moment and then, without warning, he pushed the door open farther and walked back into the apartment.

Noah took that as an invitation to follow him in. Mr. Schuester had settled back into his spot at the dining room table, and Noah cautiously sat down in front of him. He eyed Mr. Schue's beer, and decided that it was probably not worth the hassle it would cause to ask Mr. Schue for a beer of his own. Instead, he launched into his apology.

He explained how they had discovered what they had discovered, and how he and Rachel had decided they had to confront Quinn and make her come clean about the arrangement. He told Mr. Schue how sorry he was about everything, and then he began to explain how he empathized with him.

The entire time he was talking, Mr. Schue was staring at the top of the dining room table, occasionally taking swigs of his beer. Noah wasn't even sure he was listening to him.

"So what are you going to do?" Mr. Schuester asked him, breaking his silence.

"I'm going to fight Quinn for custody. I never meant to cause you any pain, Mr. Schue, but I want to be there for my daughter. I know you will be an awesome father someday, sir, but I want to be an awesome father for my daughter, too. What are you going to do?" he asked the older man, wondering if he was overstepping any boundaries.

"I'm getting divorced," Mr. Schue said, point-blank. "I can't live with a woman who would lie to me like that it. If she can break faith with me, how can I trust that she truly loves me? How could I possibly know if she was ever going to tell me the truth about anything? If a relationship is going to work, there has to be honesty, not deceit. You lose everything if you attempt to trap someone into something or lie to them."

"Terri may have thought she was doing what she did out of her love for me, but it's not possible to love someone and knowingly hurt them and deceive them like that. I should have known that about her. I should have seen sooner that we were falling out of love. I should have known that it wasn't going to work a long time ago, but I looked the other way. I let something that could have been amazing slip through my fingers because my head was turned the other way. My life has been a series of missed opportunities ever since." Mr. Schuester was getting a bit worked up, and Noah couldn't blame him. _If Rachel ever lied to him like that…_

But Rachel would never lie to him. He knew that for a fact. She wouldn't be able to deceive him, she was too good. Sure, she'd lied to Finn, and she'd lied to a couple of other people about what had happened on her front lawn, but he just couldn't picture her lying to him.

At the same time, he discovered that he couldn't ever imagine lying to her. He relied on her too much to let her down by misleading her. As he went over it in his head, he realized exactly how much he relied upon Rachel to provide direction in his life. How he missed her when she wasn't there. How after she had fallen asleep on his bed while he was fighting with his sister to get into the shower, he had stood in the doorway and watched her sleep for what felt like 10 minutes, but was another hour.

He thought of how she had been the first one to believe him, and how she had stuck by him even though he had been a total jackass to her in the past. How she had believed in him enough to help him come up with the funding and the research for his custody case. How she always referred to them as a "we" and how he sometimes dreamed about the two of them as a _we_.

He thought of how he didn't want to be without Rachel, the polar opposite of the way that Mr. Schue felt about his wife. There wasn't love between the two adults; there was animosity and familiarity. There were lies and years of history. But between Rachel and him there was nothing but an openness and a dependence upon each other. He wanted to see her.

He sat with Mr. Schue for another half-hour, letting him talk it out, while trying to control his impatience to leave. He was saved when Miss Pillsbury knocked on the door and Mr. Schue attempted to disguise the obvious crush that he had.

He drove to Rachel's excitedly, and when he got to her house, he was disappointed to find that she and her dads were still eating dinner. He wanted to take her upstairs and talk to her, but he couldn't be rude to Rachel's dads – they had done so much for him. He waited impatiently, trying to act normal. Several times he got caught staring at her for too long.

"What?" she asked, her hand quickly covering her mouth. "Do I have something on my face?"

"No," he replied quickly, and spent the rest of the meal trying to control his urge to look at her and check to see if she was finished. Thankfully, Rachel had cooked dinner that evening so her dads were in charge of clean-up. As her dads began to stack dishes and carry them to the kitchen, he grabbed her by the hand and began towing her up the stairs.

"What's going on with you?" she asked him, sounding a bit nervous. _She probably thinks that something else has happened_ he thought, and he couldn't blame her for being apprehensive. _It's not like it would be uncommon_.

When they got to her room, he shut the door behind him and crossed to stand in front of her. She was the one staring at him now, her eyes wide and searching his face for signs of damage.

"I'm fine, Rachel, really. I just figured something out, and I had to… had to tell you about it," he finished, as his nerves began to take hold of him. He couldn't believe that he was actually about to do what he was about to do. He couldn't believe that he'd been such an idiot and hadn't seen it sooner.

"Rachel, I went to Mr. Schue's and we talked for a while. One of the things he said was about why he was getting divorced. He said that he couldn't see how he would ever be able to trust her, knowing what she was capable of, but that it mattered most that she was capable of doing that to him while claiming to love him, that really showed him that she didn't."

He paused for breath. He felt like he was speaking too fast, and he realized that he was sounding more and more like her each day. He gave her a little half-grin, and continued.

"Mr. Schue saying that made me start thinking about the relationships I have in my life – like with my dad, who's an asshole somewhere, and my mom, who doesn't really speak and doesn't trust anyone, not even me. And like, with Finn, who has changed into this unrecognizable douchebag, and with Quinn, who lied to me so much and hurt me so badly that I _still_ feel a weird twisting in my stomach whenever I see her. And I used to think that that was because I was like, in love with her in some way. But I'm not, see, because just like Mr. Schue, after I found out what she was capable of the first time, it ruined my ability to ever love her."

He was building up to his big finish, and he was so nervous – _dude, you're a stud_, he told himself. He looked at Rachel's face again and he could see she was unsure of where he was going with this.

"And then I thought about you. And I thought about how I can't imagine you ever being like that. I can't imagine you ever hurting someone in such a way. And then I thought about how much I need you in my life and how awesome you are, and how I… how I…" he was losing control of his words; his brain felt like mush. So instead of using his brain, he borrowed a bit of Puck's confidence and leaned towards her.

_She is so tiny_ he thought, and he could feel her breath on his face. He lowered his mouth to hers and just before he brought his lips down on hers, he looked into her eyes and found them wide with…_fear_?

The feeling of her mouth on his drove every thought from his mind. He felt the little _zing_ he got whenever they touched, except this time it was all over his body. He pulled her towards him aggressively and attempted to deepen the kiss. He could feel her wrapping her arms around him, and her hands were…what?

She was pushing him away from her. He stumbled back from her, confused.

"Why did you _do that_?" she asked him, indignant.

_Oh. Fuck. _


	16. Oh How I Want to be Free

**A/N: Please don't hate , please read and review.  
**

**Disclaimer: I don't own it.

* * *

**"You just ruined _everything_! We were such a good team, and now you've changed everything and I know you still have feelings for Quinn even though you say you don't, and I don't want to be some rebound girl and I can't believe you'd just _kiss_ me, thinking I'd be okay with it.." she was speaking faster and faster, but she didn't think Noah was listening. He seemed to have gone rigid when she pushed him away from her and was staring at her as if he had never seen her before.

She didn't understand why he had kissed her. Everything was going so well, and then Mr. Schuester had found out, and Noah went there, and had what, an epiphany? That suddenly he couldn't live without her and loved her? She didn't buy it. Her experience (though severely limited) couldn't let her believe that he actually loved her. She thought that he must have just gotten too mixed up emotionally and acted on a weird impulse. _But that impulse is going to change everything about us_, she thought.

She could see that he was upset, and she tried to soothe him.

"We just need to talk about this, okay?" she said, gently placing a hand on his arm. Stiffly, he pulled away from her touch, and walked out of her room without saying anything.

She wasn't sure what hurt worse – that Noah was leaving, in pain, or that she had caused him so much pain that he couldn't even come up with a verbal defense, as he had done when she had originally broken up with him.

Her eyes burned and she sank to her bed in tears. It wasn't supposed to be like this. They weren't supposed to hurt each other – they were each other's safety net. She had failed him and caused him pain. She curled up on top of her bed and cried into her pillow, not wanting her fathers to hear.

She was angry at him, though. For turning his back on her. For not even trying to speak. But what did he expect, that she was going to kiss him back? _Of course he did,_ she thought. That's why he was in so much pain when he left. But she saw the way he still stared at Quinn. She had watched him while they were tracking Quinn, and he would gaze at her with pain and love and hate etched into his face. He would never be able to love her while he still loved Quinn, and she was not going to be his consolation prize. She was not going to fall for another boy who, despite all odds, loved Quinn Fabray.

She was burning with anger and sadness and she was at a loss of what to do. She curled tighter into a ball and was starting to cry again when the doorbell rang. _Maybe he came back!_ she thought, and she pulled herself out of the ball and tip-toed to the top of the stairs.

It wasn't Noah. Her heart sank at the sight of the person standing in her front hall. Her daddy was looking at the person with a face full of mistrust and slight disgust, mixed with concern. Rachel couldn't believe what she was seeing. Of all people to show up and ring her doorbell, she never, ever expected a visit from Quinn Fabray.

"Rachel!" Quinn cried when she saw her peeking from the top of the stairs. "I need to talk to you, please." It was more that Quinn had said please, and that she was pregnant with Noah's baby that forced her to allow Quinn to come to her room.

Quinn perched herself carefully on Rachel's desk chair. Her stomach had popped a few weeks ago, and she was looking bigger and bigger everyday. Her cheeks were flushed and her golden hair was curling softly around her face. _Pregnancy definitely agrees with her_, Rachel thought bitterly. She was hit with a sudden feeling of jealousy, but she couldn't place her finger on what she was jealous of. The only thing that Quinn had that Rachel didn't was…_Noah's baby?_

No. Weird. And wrong. She had no desire to have a child at the moment; she was going to go to Broadway and a child would seriously hamper that vision. But (she was beginning to understand) she was jealous of the fact that Quinn held a piece of Noah.

"Why are you here, Quinn?" she asked the other girl, anxious to stop the previous line of thought.

"I wanted to talk to you about everything that's happened with the baby, and with Mr. Schuester and with Puck," Quinn began. "I wanted to say I'm sorry. I know it's not an excuse, but I was so scared when Mrs. Schuester approached me, and I felt like that was the only way that I could make it work – I wouldn't have to be a teenaged mom, my baby would have at least one good parent, and Finn would never find out that he wasn't the father, because he would never see signs of Puck in his child."

"I'm not the one you should be explaining this to," Rachel said coldly.

"I know I have to talk to Mr. Schue and to Puck, too, but I wanted to talk to you first, because I wanted to talk to you about something else, too."

Quinn settled back into the chair. "Ever since I had to go to the hospital that day, you and Puck have been attached at the hip. You two are always together – you do everything and go everywhere together. You communicate with your eyes or with body language, and the other person understand without saying a word. And you've both changed – Puck so much for the better. You've brought out a side of him that no one knew existed." She paused for breath.

"After everything that's happened, I think it's pretty clear that when Puck sues for custody (and I know he will, and that you've been helping him build his case) he'll probably be granted custody. And he won't know what he's doing, and he'll need someone who believes in him by his side. Someone strong. Like you."

Rachel struggled to control her emotions and her questions as Quinn kept talking.

"I know that the two of you don't see it – but I've been watching you, trying to figure out whether or not Puck would actually be a good dad, and because of you, I can see that he will be. I'm not ready to be a mom. I don't want to be a mom. I want to make a fresh start with Finn. But you and Puck…" Quinn trailed off.

"His name is Noah," Rachel said, tired of differentiating between Noah and Puck.

"Fine. Noah. You and Noah are in love. And you're both being dumb and not doing anything about it, and all of the glee kids see it, even Finn, and we don't know why you're not doing anything about it."

Rachel was completely flummoxed. Not 20 minutes ago she had questioned Noah's motives and feelings, and yet here was another person confirming that what he had professed to feel for her was true.

"What makes you so sure that he loves me?" she questioned Quinn. "For years he tortured me, and then he joined glee and we dated for all of what, a week, before I determined that he was in love with you and couldn't love me? And then he turned back into an asshole. Now, granted, he did change when everything happened with the baby, but I originally stood by him because I knew that he needed support. And that support grew into a friendship, I suppose, but… I can see that he still loves you!" she finished.

"He doesn't love me, Rachel. He never did. He never knew that he was having sex with me, which you know, and he would never have chosen to do so, even if he was single. I think maybe he tried to disguise the pain I was putting him through by explaining it away to having feelings for me, but they weren't true feelings. But he does have feelings for you!" Quinn was starting to sound bossy and slightly bitchy.

"You know as well as I do that before you and he ever dated, he was going after women left and right, especially the cougars. And ever since then, he hasn't hooked up with anyone. He stopped going out. He spends all of his time with you, and his sister adores you. I know from conversations I've overheard that he hasn't introduced you to his mom because he's afraid she'll come on too strong about the Jewish thing. But I know he wants to. He was talking to Kurt about it the other day."

Rachel had wondered about that. In all the time that had gone by, in all the time that she had spent inside Noah's house, she had never met his mother. On the nights she was off of work, Noah came to her house to study and work on the case. On nights when she was at work, Rachel went to his house and was always out the door at least a half-hour before his mother was expected home. She hadn't understood at the time, but the way Quinn was explaining it…

"But…but…" she was at a loss for words. She couldn't believe that what Quinn was saying was actually beginning to make sense. She couldn't believe that Noah had actually acted on all of this, and that she had pushed him away.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

"What?" Quinn asked her.

"Noah…he…" she was nervous about having girl-talk with Quinn Fabray, her sworn enemy.

"Spit it out, Berry," Quinn urged her, and Rachel fought the urge to snap at the other girl.

"He just kissed me 20 minutes ago, and I pushed him away. I asked him why he had ruined what we had. I thought he was confused…I thought that he still loved you, and I didn't want to be second best anymore." Rachel was mortified, and she sat back down on her bed.

"You pushed him away? You're an idiot!" Quinn shrieked at her.

"Yes, I am realizing that, thank-you," Rachel sniped at her.

"Well, call him and tell him to come back," Quinn said.

Rachel dialed his number on speed dial and waited as the phone rang and rang. When it went to voicemail, she hung up and pressed the speed dial buttons for his house line. This time, she began to leave a message.

"Noah, it's Rachel, please call m…" she cut off when the line went dead. "He's not going to answer. He doesn't want to talk to me. I hurt him when I pushed him away."

"Well, then, go after him, duh," Quinn told her.

Rachel slipped into her shoes and grabbed her purse and hurried down the stairs. She grabbed her dusty keys from the hook by the door and headed out to her car. She could hear Quinn coming slowly behind her.

When she got to her car she tried to press the power unlock button, but it wouldn't work so she unlocked the car manually. When she put the key in the ignition and tried to start the car, the transmission didn't turn over. No lights came on. No beeping open-door noise sounded.

"Shit!" she exclaimed, and ran back inside the house.

"Quinn!" she cried. "May I get a jump from your car? My car won't start."

"As long as I don't have to do anything but turn the car on," Quinn replied.

Thankfully, Rachel's dads had taught her how to jump start a car when she was learning to drive, and she hooked the cables up properly and had Quinn turn her car on. When Quinn's car had been running for a minute, she went to her car and attempted to start it up. Her car was silent.

"Honey, you haven't driven your car in so long that the battery probably died," she heard her dad say as he walked down the driveway.

"How am I going to get there?" she cried in exasperation. "Dad, may I borrow either yours or Daddy's cars for a couple of hours?"

"Oh sweetie, you know you can't drive our cars. They're company cars and you're not covered under the insurance when you're driving them. Daddy or I would take you wherever you need to go, but Daddy just took a muscle relaxer for his back, and I had a few too many glasses of wine with dinner tonight. Can it wait until morning?" her father looked truly apologetic.

"No. It can't wait." To Rachel's surprise, those words had come from Quinn's mouth and not her own. "Come on Rachel, I'll take you over there. I need to go see Finn, and he's right down the street."

"Thanks, Quinn," she whispered, feeling odd about getting into a car with Quinn, and appreciating Quinn's willingness to help her. It was strange to have Quinn on her side, helping her to go after Noah.

"I wish I understood why you're doing this, Quinn," she said. "It's so out of character for you – you hate me."

"But you have been good for Noah, Rachel. And since he's going to raise this little girl, I need to be good to the person who has helped him prepare to do that. I want her to have a good life, and you can help give that to her." Quinn's words rang with truth.

Quinn was driving quickly, Rachel could tell as the trees zipped by her. She barely paused at stop signs and tapped her foot impatiently when they hit red lights.

"Why are you so agitated?" Rachel asked her.

"I just need to go talk to Finn. I'm going to tell him I've made up my mind. I won't contest Noah's request for custody. I'm going to give her to him and walk away. I may go live with my aunt; get away from here, from the gossip," Quinn said sadly.

"Do you really mean it this time?" Rachel asked her, a bit sarcastically. She bit her tongue.

"Yes! I do. I know I've lied a lot, but I'm tired of lying and I'm tired of all of the drama. He'll be a good dad. I just can't be a good mom," Quinn said with finality.

She had barely tapped her brakes at a stop sign when she started to turn. Rachel turned towards Quinn to ask her why she didn't think she would be a good mother when she saw bright lights much too close, at a very bad angle.

"Quinn!" she shouted, but it was too late. The car hit the driver's side door and Rachel heard metal screaming and Quinn shrieking in pain and the plastic buckling and the glass shattering. She felt the tires burst on the right hand side of the car as Quinn's car was pushed sideways by the force of the impact. When the tires gave the rims began to dig into the ground and the momentum of the other car forced Quinn's car to flip.

Rachel could feel the car flipping onto its side, and she screamed as her window broke and glass shattered everywhere. As the car rolled onto its top, she could see the roof of the car begin to crumple and out the window she saw that they were sliding towards a concrete construction barrier. She saw the concrete looming closer and closer, and then everything went black.

When she came to, she was strapped to a stretcher and could barely open her eyes. Her throat felt full of liquid and she choked a little trying to speak. "Where's Quinn?" she tried to ask, but her throat was too full for her to get the words out.

She was wheeled towards an ambulance, and she heard an EMT call out that he needed suction. She was loaded into the ambulance and she felt like she was choking when they stuck the tube down her throat. She could feel her throat clear, and she tried to rasp out, "Where's Quinn?" but the EMT had just plunged a syringe into her arm, and she felt warmth and lightness flow through her, and she felt her eyelids closed.

When she opened her eyes again, she was lying in a hospital room. She remembered being loaded into an ambulance, but she couldn't really remember why. She could hear the machines beeping, but she couldn't turn her head to look at them. She began to panic, thinking that she'd been paralyzed, and began spasming on the bed, trying not to cry.

"Honey, honey, stop!" she heard, and saw Kurt's face loom above her. "You've got a neck brace on because they weren't sure if you had whiplash or any swelling in the brain. You're not paralyzed."

"Oh… oh… oh" she whimpered. "What's wrong with me, Kurt?" she questioned.

"You had a concussion, and you cut your head pretty badly when the glass blew. There was a lot of blood from the cuts, and you broke your right arm when the car...when the car," Kurt began to choke on his words, and attempted to steady himself. "When the car rolled onto its side."

"You had to have 12 stitches in your side for another gash, but other than that, nothing's broken. You're going to be fine," he continued with a watery smile.

Kurt's words were not a balm to her. She had just begun to realize how odd it was that it was Kurt here in her room, and not Noah. Where was he? Had they been able to notify him? Where were her dads? Why weren't they in the hospital room, waiting for her to wake up?

"Kurt, did anyone get in touch with my dads?" she asked him, and she thought she saw a look of guilt pass over his face, but then he moved into the light and she thought she had just imagined it.

"Yes, the hospital called your dads," Kurt responded.

"Well then, where are they?" Rachel asked, a little hurt that they weren't here with her if they knew she was in the hospital.

"They…" Kurt paused, and this time Rachel knew that it wasn't a trick of the light – Kurt looked guilty. "They had to take care of an issue. They'll be back."

"Can you call Noah?" she asked Kurt, and saw his stricken expression.

"Oh come on, Kurt, he hasn't thrown you in the dumpster in months, nor has he slushied you. Please call him for me?" she asked him.

"Rachel, Noah knows you're here. This isn't about dumpster driving or slushies," Kurt said sadly.

"Where is he?" she asked him, and then realized what she'd been trying to remember. Quinn had been driving her. The other car had hit them on Quinn's side of the car.

"Where's Quinn?" she whispered, and she saw tears glisten in Kurt's eyes.

"Where's Quinn?" she asked again when Kurt hesitated. "Is she okay? Kurt, is she okay?!"

"Rachel," Kurt said, and picked up her left hand, cradling it in both of his. "Rachel… Quinn's going to be okay, too. She's going to be…fine," Kurt trailed off.

"Then where is Noah? What's going on? What issue did my dads have to go take care of? What's wrong with Quinn that you aren't telling me?" Rachel asked, her mind a frenzy of emotions and questions.

"Rachel," Kurt began, grasping her hand more firmly in his, "your dads are helping Noah. They're restraining him…" he said, and suddenly she understood.

"No!" she whisper-cried, grief crashing into her. "No! It's not fair! It's not possible!"

"Oh honey," Kurt whispered, and she could see that he was crying, too. "The baby died. They tried to save her, but the damage from the accident was too much for her tiny body to handle."

"She's dead. She's dead," Rachel began and kept repeating it as her eyes filled with tears and she began to cry in earnest. "Noah's little girl…. She's gone."


	17. But Life Still Goes On

**A/N: Told you there'd be a lot of major stuff. But if you're familiar with the song, you know it's winding out to the end. Keep reading! **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, unfortunately. **

* * *

"Daddy! Help me!" his daughter screamed, and he raced towards her, trying to stop her from getting hurt. Just as he reached the sidewalk where she was standing, she was snatched away from him. "No!" he screamed.

He sat up in bed gasping, sweat covering his body. His head hung forward and he began to cry. This had become a nightly occurrence for him – every time he fell asleep he dreamed about her. About how he wanted so badly to save her, but he was always unable to.

That night had been awful. He had been ignoring his phone because he was afraid of what Rachel would say to him when they spoke again – he was so hurt that she had pushed him away. He thought that she had loved him, too. _Wrong_, he thought bitterly.

Then his phone began to ring in earnest, and to his surprise the number on the caller ID was not Rachel, but Finn. He ignored it, but when the phone calls kept coming back to back, he finally answered.

"What the fuck, dude? Why are you calling me?" he barked into the phone.

"There's…been an accident," Finn began, and Noah could feel his heart jump into his throat. He should have answered her call. Then she wouldn't have had to come after him, and she wouldn't be hurt.

"Is Rachel okay?" he asked Finn, desperate for reassurance. He was scrambling around his house now, grabbing his jacket, his keys, his wallet. Where the fuck were his shoes?

"Um, they haven't revealed anything about Rachel yet. How do you know already? Did Rachel's dads call you?" Finn asked, suspicious.

"No, it's just Rachel and I had a fight, and… wait, why are you calling me?" It had just dawned on him that if Rachel had gotten into an accident, it would not be Finn who called him to notify him. Finn would only notify him if something had happened to Quinn. If something had happened to his baby.

He sank to his knees, unable to stand. "Finn, what's going on?" he croaked hoarsely.

"Rachel and Quinn were in an accident. Quinn was driving Rachel…the car hit Quinn's side almost head on…" Noah heard and did not hear the tears choke through Finn as he began to explain what had happened.

"What about my baby?" he asked him, praying to God that she was okay.

"They don't know yet, man. They're taking the girls to the hospital. I'm on my way there, now."

Noah hadn't even told his mother he was leaving. He didn't listen to the end of Finn's call, he just shut his phone and ran to his truck. The entire race to the hospital, he made silent pleas to God, begging him to save his little girl. He had been fighting so hard for her, please, please just let her be safe.

He ran through the emergency room lobby, bypassing the glee kids and Mr. Schue. He ran straight for the ER doors and could see the shiny gold top of Quinn's head on one of the gurneys, surrounded by doctors.

"Please! Please let me in," he turned and shouted towards the admitting nurse.

"Sir, I can't do that," the nurse began, but he cut her off.

"That's my baby in there! That's my _baby!_" he screamed, and he felt everyone turn to stare at him, but he didn't care.

"Thank God you're here," he heard Finn say, and he whirled around. Finn grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in to the ER. "I heard you screaming, figured you wanted in. This is as close as they'll let us come, though," Finn warned.

Noah's body was burning as he fought the urge to run across the room and save the baby himself. He continued to plead with God, hoping that his baby girl would be okay.

"She's stabilizing," he heard a nurse call out. His spirits lifted, and he watched in earnest as the medical team rallied around her.

His vision was interrupted when Mr. and Mr. Berry were admitted to the ER. For the first time since he had gotten Finn's phone call, he thought of Rachel.

"Noah!" Mr. Berry said. "We're so sorry…is everything going to be okay with the baby?"

"They just said that she was stabilizing, so that sounds good, right?" he responded nervously, raking his fingers through his peach-fuzz hair. "How's Rachel?" he asked.

"We're going to see her now. She hasn't woken up from the sedation yet, we're told," said the other Mr. Berry. "Kurt is with her now."

At that moment a doctor left the medical team surrounding Quinn and walked over to where the four men were clustered.

"Which one of you is responsible for Quinn Fabray?" the doctor asked.

"I am," Finn said, more than a little nervously. "But he's responsible for the baby," Finn continued, squeezing Noah's shoulder.

"Then I'm afraid I have good and bad news," the doctor began, and Noah felt the world begin to drop out from underneath him. "We've managed to stabilize Ms. Fabray, although she suffered a lot of damage. Unfortunately, due to the extent of her injuries, Ms. Fabray's body was unable to support the child she was bearing, and we were unable to save the baby."

"No! No!" he began screaming, and he could feel Finn grip him to keep him from launching himself at the doctor. "My baby, my little girl," he was screaming and sobbing and he sank to his knees. He felt as if he had been ripped apart – he had lost his purpose for living. He had promised her that he was going to make the world safe for her, that he was going to protect her, and he had failed so miserably. And now…now she was gone.

Grief ripped through him and he sobbed openly on the tile floor of the hospital. He wasn't sure how long he let Finn hold him while he cried, but the ER doors opened suddenly and EMTs began wheeling another gurney into the ER.

"We have the driver of the other vehicle," he heard a tech report, and he lost all feeling. A cool numbness stole over him and he felt nothing but a single-minded determinedness flow through him as he shoved Finn away from him and stood up.

He was at the driver's side before he knew he had moved. It was as if he were acting out of gut-reaction, or was on a remote control. Part of him could hear that he was shouting, that he was screaming and crying and attempting to get his hands on the driver, who, unfortunately, was not comatose.

He was struggling wildly with his hands and arms, but he couldn't move them forward enough to actually do any damage. He whipped his head around and saw that Mr. and Mr. Berry were restraining his arms, and that Finn was pulling him backwards. He saw the looks of pity on Rachel's fathers faces and the tears that streamed down Finn's face, and he felt something break inside of him.

He allowed himself to be led away by Rachel's fathers. Finn opted to stay with Quinn, so that he could be the one to tell her the news.

It had been months from that awful night, and every time he fell asleep he dreamed of being able to save her. Every night when he woke up unsuccessful, he cried, and then relived the night all over again. It was as if his mind was a projector that was stuck on the same reel – he was never able to move past it.

He reached for his cell phone and opened it to call her. He heard it ring, and there was a long pause as it was answered and a sleep-filled voice whispered, "Hello?"

He didn't respond, but lay there hearing her breathe.

"Noah?" he heard her whisper, and his heart broke at the way she said his name. "Noah, please say something. I know it's you that calls. Please just talk to me," she said, but he hung up instead.

That night had shattered him. He had come so close to having his little girl in his arms – he was going to be able to win custody, and he would get to be a dad. And then it was all snatched away. He hadn't known who to blame – the other driver, for not swerving. Quinn, for not actually stopping at the stop sign. Rachel, for having Quinn drive her to come after him. Himself, for not answering Rachel's phone calls. Or Rachel, again, for pushing him away from her when he had tried to tell her how he felt.

He had only seen Rachel once, while she was sleeping in the hospital bed. It was two days after he had lost his reason to live, and he was staring at her hollowly; watching her face twitch as she dreamed. She had started to cry out in her sleep, and though he had wanted to go to her, to comfort her, he was locked in position by the door. She settled into her sleep again, and he turned away, closing the door behind him.

He had retreated entirely into himself following the death of his baby girl. Quinn had agreed to let him name her for the tombstone he had purchased for her. He had chosen Leah, and her tombstone only bore the date of her death and the name, Leah Puckerman. He hadn't held a funeral for her. He hadn't wanted to see anyone.

People had tried coming to show him their support, now that the truth was out in the open, but he had turned them away. Rather, he had used his mother and sister as bodyguards, having them bar entrance to anyone who asked to see him. Even Rachel.

The first week, she came every day, having been driven over by her fathers. He couldn't see her, didn't want to see her, couldn't handle seeing her, knowing that she didn't love him and that she felt obligated to support him. Instead of leaving, she sat outside all day, sometimes speaking up to his window, sometimes singing. He never moved to the window, and he couldn't hear what she was saying, but she stayed anyway.

When she went back to school, she came by every morning, hoping that that day would be the day he returned to school. Every afternoon she came back and dropped off a pile of schoolwork and notes for him. Sometimes she tried to stay and hang out with his sister, but he stayed in his room and pretended to be asleep when she would knock on the door.

It just hurt too much to see her. She was a major part of what he had lost, and seeing her was an instant reminder of his little girl, his hopes, and his supposed future. The pain ripped at him like knives, so he began to try to close himself off from it. He couldn't bear it anymore. The only way he knew to close himself off from thought and emotion was to become Puck. And Puck and Rachel were not friends.

When he returned to school, he left his house before she could arrive. When she saw him walking through the hallway, she smiled tentatively at him, but he forced his gaze to turn cold. She looked as if he'd slapped her across the face, and he watched her as her eyes darted from his face to the grape slushie in his hand.

He didn't throw it at her. He couldn't, for some reason. He had bought it with every intention of throwing it at her, because that meant that the Noah Puckerman that had emerged with her help would be truly shelved away, forgotten, as if he had never existed. It meant that he hadn't learned how to care, how to feel. He could be cold and emotionless. But he couldn't throw it.

It might have been easier if he wasn't the only one left. Quinn had never returned to school, opting to move to her aunt's house in Maine to get away from everything that had happened. In a fit of gallantry, Finn had gone with her. Puck couldn't leave his mom and little sister, not after the way his dad had walked out. That left him to be the focus of everyone's questions and nervous chatter. More than a few times he heard whispers through the hallway asking about his daughter, about Quinn, about Rachel. He ignored them.

He didn't speak to anyone. He was silent from the moment he woke up in the morning until after he got home from school. At home he said almost nothing, adopting his mother's attitude. He went through the motions of attending classes, but he hardly ever did homework and he never studied. He quit the football team and only went to glee practices to sit in the back and watch.

Everyone knew that the accident had changed everything. Quinn and the baby had changed everything. Mr. Schuester had become more bitter, more sarcastic. The loss of Finn and Quinn from the team had made them ineligible for regionals until Coach Sylvester cut another two girls from the Cheerios, and they joined glee instead.

No one tried to get him to participate. He sat in the back of the room, hearing the music around him, feeling the stares from the other kids. He was appreciative that they were respecting his privacy and not asking him any questions, but their stares made him uncomfortable.

The worst was Rachel's. Some days she stared at him as if she could force him to speak with her eyes. Some days she looked so hurt when she stared at him that he could barely hold himself still. Some days she didn't stare at all, and the fact that she didn't care hurt him even worse. Yesterday she hadn't looked him at all, and when he walked past her he could feel the chill emanating from her.

He missed her. He wanted to tell her just how much she meant to him, and how badly it hurt him that she had pushed him away. He wanted to have her be the one to hold him as he cried about Leah. He wanted hers to be the hand that he held when he went to sit at Leah's grave. He wanted to be able to just speak to her, but he couldn't. Every time he tried, his mind blanked and then, with a fresh burst of pain, he remembered everything that happened and couldn't move past it.

He was tired of missing her – he would always miss his daughter, and the future that he would never have, but he didn't have to miss Rachel Berry. He could do something about that, and then maybe, like she fixed him before, she could fix him again.

Instead of rolling over and trying to go back to sleep the way he always did after he had the nightmare, he lay back and began working on a plan to get her back.


	18. I Can't Get Used to Living Without

**A/N: Does anyone else absolutely LOVE the Glee tribute video/song on Mark Salling's new webpage? So sweet and cute. Love it. Also, I wrote this, edited it, and published it after taking a serious painkiller to deal with my crazy back, so please forgive/point out any mistakes/inconsistencies that I made. Other than that, please, as always, read and review!**

**Disclaimer: Do I have to put this up on every chapter? If not, see previous chapters for my witty "I don't own anything" quips.

* * *

**Kurt let her cry for a long time without saying anything to her. She appreciated his silence, but his silence became so huge and so loud that it hung heavy over her, forcing her screams to stay locked in her chest. When her fathers entered the room, the immediately came to her and tried to comfort her, but they were unsuccessful. She was unresponsive.

After she stopped crying, she stopped making any noise. She stared at the wall or at the ceiling, and drifted in and out of sleep. In her sleep she revisited the scene of the car accident, always trying to make Quinn make a complete stop at the stop sign, and always failing. She didn't speak when she was awake, and she didn't cry, but at night she screamed.

After the first few days in the hospital, she was able to break off a section of her grief and lock it away so that she could begin to function again. She knew she wasn't the only one hurting – she also knew that she was not the one who was hurting the worst.

She ached to go to him and comfort him, to hold him while he cried, and to grieve for his daughter with him. She had come to love his little girl almost as much as he did during their time together. She was devastated by the fact that he hadn't come to see her, but she knew that he was probably so raw with pain that he couldn't do anything, go anywhere. She understood that he couldn't come to see her.

When she was finally able to stand again (Kurt had been wrong, she'd bruised her femur in the accident, too) she asked Kurt where Quinn's room was. She had limped down the hospital hallway towards the room and stood in front of the door gathering her courage to go inside.

When she had entered Quinn's room, she was shocked by the array of medical equipment around her. Quinn had shattered her left arm and the ribs on her left side. One of her ribs had punctured an internal organ and she had experienced internal bleeding. Most shocking was not the equipment Quinn was connected to, nor the bandages, sutures, and plaster that held her together. It was the hopeless, dead look on her face.

Rachel limped towards the bed and Quinn had raised her eyes to hers and simply said, "I'm sorry." Rachel knew that she was apologizing for much more than the car accident, and the tears that she had locked away began to spill down over her cheeks.

Quinn was somewhat shifted in the bed so that there was a large area of space on her right side. When Rachel had begun to cry Quinn had used her good arm to motion her towards the bed. When Rachel got to the edge of the bed, Quinn had held out her hand and pulled her forward, so that Rachel climbed into the bed.

They had lain their on the bed, Rachel wrapped into Quinn, and the two girls had cried for everything that had been lost. As they had cried, Quinn had whispered to her, "Tell him I'm so sorry. Please ask him to forgive me."

Rachel had never gotten the chance. She was released from the hospital the next day, and Noah still had not come by to see her. She convinced her fathers to drive her to his house as soon as they had left the hospital, and she had used a cane to limp her way up his front steps.

When she had knocked at the door, Mrs. Puckerman had answered. It was the first time Rachel had ever met her, but when she answered the door, her only words were, "I'm sorry, Rachel. He doesn't want to see anyone." Rachel stared back at her in shock and tried to summon an argument, but Mrs. Puckerman, shaking her head, was already shutting the door.

Rachel had convinced her fathers to drive her over there every day and drop her off. She waited for him every day, waited to be granted access to his house, to his heart. She sat on the steps or on one of the front porch chairs and read and talked to his open window, hoping he could hear her. Sometimes she sang to him, trying to heal him with music. It never worked.

When she went back to school she was besieged with questions from the glee kids, from the Cheerios, from the football team. It was as if she had suddenly become popular overnight, but she knew that as soon as people had gotten the gossip they wanted, she would become "Man Hands" again. Instead, she only spoke to the glee kids. They were quiet and supportive, and helped her gather notes and assignments for Noah.

Once she stopped limping and was able to drive again, she went to Noah's house every day before school, attempting to force him into attending. After school, she would drop off his notes and assignments, and would hope desperately that she would catch a glimpse of him. She even managed to convince his sister to let her hang out inside the house a few times, watching movies and working on schoolwork, but whenever she went to his door he didn't answer.

A month after the accident had happened, Quinn had rung her doorbell. Standing next to her, looking sheepish, was Finn. Behind them in the driveway was a small u-Haul.

"Are you leaving?" Rachel asked. She had suspected Quinn would make good on her notion of going to her aunt's place to start over.

"Yeah, we're going to go live with my aunt in Maine and try to move past this…" Quinn told her.

"You're going too, Finn?" Rachel asked. This, she had not expected. At least not yet. He was still in high school, although he hadn't returned after the accident. Instead he stayed with Quinn until she had gotten out of the hospital, and then the two of them had returned home to Finn's mother's house.

"I can't live without her. And after everything that has happened here in the last few months, I need to leave. I need to be where she is, so that we can rebuild together." It was the most intelligent set of sentences that she had ever heard Finn string together, and it shocked her a little bit. Maybe he could change.

"I wanted to tell you again how sorry I am," Quinn whispered to her. "I'm so sorry. About everything. Not just the stuff with Noah and the baby, but everything I ever did to you. You didn't deserve it. I'm sorry I was so shallow."

"I know you're sorry," Rachel whispered back, and pulled her into a light hug. "It's okay."

"Have you seen him yet?" Quinn asked her.

"No," Rachel replied, "he won't let me into the house. He won't answer his phone… and his mother and sister tell me nothing about him. If I try to talk to them about him, they clam up and it becomes uncomfortable and I have to leave. I miss him so much!" she cried, frustrated.

"So you don't know anything?" Finn asked her, surprised.

"What should I know?" Rachel asked him.

"I – I let him name her," Quinn began, and Rachel sucked in a breath as she tried to stave off the pain she felt whenever she thought of Noah's daughter. "I let him name her, because he put all of his savings into a tombstone for her. He buried her by himself. He wouldn't let anyone come," Quinn broke off, seeing the hurt on Rachel's face.

She couldn't begin to understand what he must have felt burying his unborn daughter. The anguish that must have been searing through him. She couldn't understand why he wouldn't let anyone come to her service. Why he hadn't at least let her know that she had been buried, so that Rachel could say her good-byes.

"What did he name her?" Rachel asked.

"Leah," Quinn replied, and Rachel's strength gave out and she collapsed onto the steps of her front porch. For someone raised in the Jewish faith, the names Rachel and Leah each held a lot of meaning, especially when mentioned together. Rachel was the bride Jacob had wished to marry, and Leah was the bride their father had tricked Jacob into marrying. Leah was not the first chosen, but she gave birth to many of the tribes of Israel, including the House of David.

Rachel understood the meaning behind Noah's name for his daughter. She had not been the first chosen by anyone, but she had brought about a change within him that had completely reworked his life. It was a good name, and through her tears, she smiled, remembering Noah's early declaration that he had felt like a bad Jew. _Good Jew_, she thought to him.

"Are you okay?" Finn asked her as reached down to pull her up.

"I'll be fine," she mumbled, brushing off his concern. He had come to her hospital room and had apologized to her sincerely this time. Things would never be the way they were before they had met in the auditorium that day, but they had reached an understanding.

"I wish you both the best of luck and love," she told the couple standing before her. Finn had laced his fingers into Quinn's good hand and they had awkwardly started their good-byes.

Her good-bye to Finn had been a bit short and abrupt, but her good-bye to Quinn was much longer, and much more poignant. The small blonde had hugged her fiercely with her good arm and whispered into her ear, "Don't let him lose himself. Don't lose yourself, either. Remind him what love can feel like," she had instructed her, and then pulled away.

Rachel had watched them drive away and felt a lump rise in her throat. She had walked back inside and fallen asleep on top of her bed, fully clothed.

That night, she received the first phone call. The loud ringing of her phone startled her awake, and she answered it before she was even fully conscious.

"Hello?" she had queried, and when she heard nothing she looked down at the phone screen. The number was blocked. She hung up, but less than five minutes later, the phone had rung again. The number was blocked, but this time she answered it and growled warnings into the ear of whoever was prank calling her and hung up with a loud snap of her phone.

The phone calls came nightly at between 2 and 4 in the morning. No one ever said anything, and one night she had fallen back asleep waiting for the someone on the other end to make a single sound that would give whoever it was away. No noise ever came, but she noticed when she woke up that the caller had stayed on the line for at least another hour or so before hanging up. It was then that she realized who her caller was.

Of course it had been Noah. Part of her realized that she had known it all along, but the lynchpin was that this "someone" had stayed on the line to listen to her sleep. That night, when she received the phone call, she began to try to speak to him.

"Noah, I know you're listening. Please just let me" she began, but he had already hung up. Whenever he called, she tried to talk to him, to apologize to him for what had happened. She tried to tell him that she had realized that she loved him, and that she wanted to be there for him. Every time she started to say something other than his name, he hung up.

One night, he called her and when she answered she was silent. She waited for him to make a noise, or to hang up. When he didn't, she made her next move. She poured as much emotion into the word as she could find inside of her and said one word… _Noah_. He had listened to her breathe for the next twenty minutes before he hung up. The next day he had reappeared at school.

When she saw him, her heart nearly burst in two with happiness. She had missed everything about him – the way his eyebrows quirked, the way his peach-fuzz stubble was slowly filling in his Mohawk, the way he walked, the way he breathed, the way he smelled… She made eye contact with him and smiled tentatively. When his face hardened into a cold mask, she felt as if he had hit her.

She glanced down, trying to hide her face and that was when she noticed the slushie in his hand, the lid off. She could see that it was purple, see that it was grape, and part of her wanted to forgive him for what he was about to do because he had at least gotten the flavor right, but she felt burned by the fact that he so obviously hated her. She braced herself for icy impact, but when a long time had passed, she opened her eyes to find that he was gone. She turned to find him in the hallway and saw him shoving the slushie into a trashcan.

She smiled. That the trash can had received the slushie, and not her face, gave her hope.

When he had returned to glee rehearsal, she had hoped that he would find solace in the music. Everyone had tried to offer him their support, but he had sat stoically in the back of the room, sometimes playing softly on his guitar, sometimes with his head in his hands.

She had watched him constantly, waiting for the Puck-ish façade to vanish and for Noah to emerge. Sometimes she was so hurt by his silence and cold nature that she couldn't allow herself to look at him because she knew she would burst into tears.

Just this morning she had received another phone call from him, and she had actually managed to get a full sentence out before he had ended the call. "Noah? Noah, please say something. I know it's you that calls. Please just talk to me," she had pleaded with him, but he had hung up again.

After returning to school, she had slipped into a cone of silence. It was as if she had become the complete polar opposite of the Rachel Berry everyone had known and hated. She stopped wearing knee socks and short skirts and started wearing jeans and T-shirts. She had stopped answering every question in class – she had stopped answering questions at all. She had withdrawn into herself, afraid of the gossipmongers, afraid of going through life without Noah by her side. When she sang, she sang with a power and emotion in her voice that was raw. Her song selections were darker, her performances more lackluster. She loved and yet dreaded glee rehearsals, because she could see him and hope that he would finally see her. She hoped that he would one day be able to understand how much she loved him.

She walked into glee rehearsal that afternoon and quietly set down her schoolbooks. She fell into a chair and watched him from across the room. Why had he let her speak so much last night? What had made him change his mind about that? Her mind was wandering when Mr. Schuester entered the room.

"Okay, guys, I know that we've had a pretty rough year and that we're all dealing with a lot of stuff right now, but we need to get it together if we even want to participate at regionals this year," their director stated, standing up by the piano. Oddly, he held no CD's, no scores, no folders of lyrics. The band was not even in the room.

"So instead of assigning you song material, I want you to find your own. I want you to put whatever you have to say, whatever you feel, everything you could possibly want to display, and put it into your music," Mr. Schue continued, passing a single hand-out around the room.

"Your assignment is to perform a small concert performance for glee kids only. Just the team members. Everyone will be given a pre-determined date for their performances. We'll do two performances a day, so that everyone can get a fair performance time. Here are your assigned dates," Mr. Schue continued, gesturing to the hand-out.

"There are to be no date switches. The first person listed on your date will be the first to perform; no exceptions. No partnering on songs. There are to be no duets. On the other hand, you may work with the band and the orchestra for whatever musical needs you have. If you need "chorus members" to make a song work in the arrangement you'd like it to work in, you may ask them to assist you. Any team member who assists another team member is not to discuss the song selections of the team member with anyone else. Performances begin a week from today," Mr. Schue concluded, and the he left the room.

Rachel looked down at the hand-out she had been given. Artie and Chelsea, one of the new ex-Cheerios, had the first day. Santana and Mike had the second day. Tina and Kurt held the third day while Mercedes and Ginger, the other ex-Cheerio, held the fourth. Matt and Brittany held the fifth day. The sixth day belonged to her…and to Noah. She was listed first on the list, probably because Mr. Schue wasn't sure if Noah would participate.

She hole-punched the date listings and slipped it into her glee binder. Her brain was already whirring into action going through a mental catalogue of every song she had ever heard. She had a plan in mind; however. If Noah wouldn't let her speak to him on the phone, he would have to listen to her when sang to him at glee. He would have to listen to her then.


	19. Living Without You by My Side

**A/N: I have never written anyone singing a song before, so I hope it plays out as well as I intended it to. Please, please, please read and review.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Glee, nothing to do with any of the songs mentioned in this chapter, nor do I own any of the songs sung in this chapter.

* * *

**

Mr. Schue had played his role perfectly. When Noah had originally approached him, the teacher had seemed startled by his presence. When Noah explained what he wanted, however; Mr. Schue was only too happy to make it feasible.

"We'll do it, Puck," he said to him, and had placed a firm, comforting hand on his shoulder. "We all need to do this right now."

A week later the performances had started. Each student had to do a minimum of 2 songs; a maximum of 3. Artie had opened the performances with a stirring version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Bruce Springsteen's "The River." Chelsea had followed him with her cover of Britney Spears "Sometimes" and Stevie Nicks "If You Ever Did Believe." The next day, Santana had wowed them all with Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" and Kate Bush's "Running Up that Hill."

Each day Noah had been more and more impressed by what his teammates had prepared. Mike performed Usher's "My Way" and Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." Tina was a showstopper, belting out "What I Did for Love" from A Chorus Line and "Come What May" from Moulin Rouge. Kurt got them all dancing to Beyonce's "Bootylicious" and then had them crying when he sang "I'll Cover You" from Rent. Mercedes slammed "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" and Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." Ginger surprised them all and performed Bette Midler's "The Rose," showing a larger range of emotion than she had ever expressed before. Her follow-up was the Gershwin classic "Someone to Watch Over Me."

Though Matt had always stayed in the background at glee and had never spoken up during football practice, he was hysterical when he covered Phish's "Loving Cup" and moving when he sang "Hey Jude." The entire time Matt had been singing the Beatles classic, he was staring at Noah. Noah knew that he was trying to apologize for everything that had happened, and that he was attempting to encourage him to move forward with his life.

Brittany was surprisingly funny when she performed "Tits and Ass" from A Chorus Line in full costume, and when she switched to "Out Tonight" from Rent, she dragged a chair forward and began to perform Mimi's famous lawn chair handcuff dance – or a close approximation to it.

Being able to choose their own music had breathed some life into the glee kids, and when the final day of performances arrived, they were practically crackling with anticipation. He was, too.

Yes, he had orchestrated this whole event, ensuring that Rachel was set to go before him so that he could put as much time into his performances and so that he could truly speak to her. If it didn't go well, he wanted to be able to bolt from the room and not have to stick around.

He had gotten to the glee room early that day, racing out of his last class and bolting down the hallway. He got to the room and took his seat in the back of the room, pulling his guitar out of the case and strumming it lazily, as if his mind was somewhere far away. He wanted to appear as if he didn't care, as if he hadn't prepared, so that it would stun Rachel.

Slowly the glee kids trickled into the room, laughing and joking about different events during the day. Mr. Schuester walked into the room behind them and took a seat next to Noah.

"Are you ready?" the teacher asked him, and Noah knew that he meant more than ready to perform. He was asking him if he was ready to lay his heart on the line again, ready to control his all-consuming grief for Leah, ready to begin to live again.

"Yes," Noah whispered to him, and then dropped his eyes. Rachel had entered the room. She wasn't dressed the way she had been dressed ever since the accident, but she wasn't dressed in the old Rachel Berry clothes either.

Her hair was long and had been straightened almost bone straight. She wore black eyeliner – not heavy, but not light enough to be called subtle. Her lips were a deep pinky-plum color, but other than that she wore no makeup. She was wearing a hippy dress in greens and blues and purples, the prints running and melding together. The dress flowed down to the tops of her feet, and she wore black flip-flops. Even from the back of the room, he could tell that she had painted her toes a deep purpley plum color.

He heard the rest of the glee kids gasp in unison. Kurt cried out, "Finally!" while Mercedes exclaimed, "Damn girl!" Santana, Brittany, Chelsea, and Ginger gave her approving gazes, while Tina stuttered out "W-w-wow!" Wolf whistles emerged from the boys side of the room, and Rachel blushed.

When she looked up at him he felt his heart quicken in his chest. She looked so unlike any other incarnation of Rachel Berry he had ever met. She looked relaxed and calm and at peace. She looked like she knew she looked good, but didn't care if anyone else appreciated it. He was stunned.

The old things about her were there, too. The way she just slightly pursed her lips when she was trying not to appear boastful. The way her skin glimmered in the light. The way she let her smile spread slowly across her face, as if she had seen the most amazing thing. He had loved it when she smiled at him that way.

He broke out of his trance and looked down at the ground. _Don't give yourself away!_ he cautioned himself. When he looked back up, Rachel was arranging the orchestra and band members around her, demanding precise placement. _Some things don't change_ he smiled to himself.

Once she had gotten everything settled, she glanced up at Mr. Schue.

"Rachel," the teacher asked, "what have you prepared for us today?"

"Mr. Schue, I'd rather give the credits after I perform the song, if you don't mind," she stated. He was proud of her; she had to make everything unique.

"Get started then. Ladies and gentlemen, Rachel Berry!" Mr. Schue announced enthusiastically, and settled back into his chair to watch.

Rachel gave a small nod to the orchestra, and a single resonating note emerged from a cello. The deep sound hung over the room and Rachel stood in the center of the band and orchestra, her head tilted forward and her eyes closed. He could barely see her face – her curtain of hair had tilted down in front of her.

As the note faded to silence, Rachel raised her head and began to sing.

"Where are we…what the hell is going on. The dust has only just begun to form crop circles in the carpet; sinking, feeling..." she sang, and her voice was powerful, urgent. The words flowed from her lips and she moved quietly with the music.

spin me round again  
and rub my eyes,  
this can't be happening  
when busy streets a mess with people  
would stop to hold their heads heavy

hide and seek  
trains and sewing machines  
all those years  
they were here first…

Rachel's voice was close to a whisper as she trailed off the last word of the previous stanza. Behind her, the orchestra had been silent the entire time. Now, they began to crescendo, building a loud wall of string behind her.

oily marks appear on walls  
where pleasure moments hung before the takeover,  
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

hide and seek  
trains and sewing machines (oh, you won't catch me around here)  
blood and tears (hearts)  
they were here first

As Rachel reached the climax of the song she through her whole body into it, and he could see the tears glistening in her eyes. He could tell that she was putting all of her emotion, all of the hurt that he had caused her into her performance. Her voice rang out:

Mmmm whatcha say,  
Mmm that you only meant well?  
well of course you did  
Mmmm whatcha say,  
Mmmm that it's all for the best?  
of course it is  
Mmmm whatcha say?  
Mmmm that it's just what we need  
you decided this  
whatcha say?  
Mmmm what did she say?

ransom notes keep falling out your mouth  
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs  
speak no feeling no I don't believe you  
you don't care a bit,  
you don't care a bit

The strings began to fade out as Rachel's voice fell to a sweet whisper.

(hide and seek)  
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth  
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs

(hide and seek)  
speak no feeling no i don't believe you  
you don't care a bit,  
you don't care a (you don't care a) bit

(hide and seek)  
oh no, you don't care a bit  
oh no, you don't care a bit

Cheers rang out from the rest of the room and Mr. Schuester applauded enthusiastically beside him. He was unable to move. He was staring at her, feeling everything she felt, knowing that she was grieving over the loss of their friendship.

"That was 'Hide and Seek' by Imogen Heap," Rachel stated, and hid her blush behind a shiny curtain of hair. Behind her the orchestra members began to edge their shell outwards, and two of the members rolled the piano to the center of the room. One of them placed the piano bench down and smiled at Rachel, encouraging her.

Noah knew that Rachel had taken piano lessons since childhood, but that of all the things she had performed in public, she had never performed on the piano in front of people. He could tell she was nervous as she took her seat at the bench and positioned herself appropriately.

The group had gone silent, and Mr. Schue was leaning on the edge of his chair with anticipation. Noah knew that he had had no idea that Rachel could play.

Rachel closed her eyes and briefly exhaled, her tiny fingers hovering over the keys. When she began to inhale she placed the pads of her fingers on the keys and began to play melancholy chords.

Her fingers moved lightly over the keys, forming chords and producing trills. A few moments after she had begun playing, she began to sing. She kept her eyes closed, as if she were trying to block out unpleasant visions, or was remembering things that caused her pain.

It's not  
What you thought  
When you first began it  
You got  
What you want  
Now you can hardly stand it though,  
By now you know  
It's not going to stop  
It's not going to stop  
It's not going to stop  
'Til you wise up

Her fingers were still drilling lightly over the chords; the soft melody achingly bittersweet in the air.

You're sure  
There's a cure  
And you have finally found it  
You think  
One drink  
Will shrink you 'til you're underground  
And living down  
But it's not going to stop  
It's not going to stop  
It's not going to stop  
'Til you wise up

Rachel's voice was more husky and more saddened than he had ever heard. Normally she found strength in the voice of her songs; it bolstered her to pour her voice out over the lyrics. As she sang this song, her voice wasn't as bold as it normally was, and he could tell that she was aching.

Prepare a list of what you need  
Before you sign away the deed  
'Cause it's not going to stop  
It's not going to stop  
It's not going to stop  
'Til you wise up  
No, it's not going to stop  
'Til you wise up  
No, it's not going to stop

Rachel's voice rang through the classroom, her voice filled with need, with pain. She opened her eyes and when he saw her eyes, he discovered exactly how badly he had hurt her with his silence. She held the last note a little longer, as if she were pleading with him. Then she closed her eyes again and sang-whispered:

So just...give up

He wanted to go to her, to hold her, to tell her how sorry he was. He felt every part of him fill with an ache that seemed as if it could only be cured by her. He had let her down so harshly, so cruelly… the last line of the song felt to him as if she were releasing him, letting him go because she felt she could never get him back. He needed to prove that she was wrong.

"That was 'Wise Up' by Aimee Mann, from the Magnolia soundtrack," she said above the applause. He heard the hidden message in her song choice – for months he had tried to get her to watch the movie with him because he had loved the music and the cinematography, and the movie cast was populated with fantastic actors. She had always declined, stating that it was too dark for her. The song choice and the last line packed a sucker punch into his chest – she still cared.

"I hope you don't mind," Rachel began, and he wasn't sure what she was about to say. "I know everyone else only did two songs, but I really, really wanted to do three, and since the maximum was three I thought it would be okay," she concluded nervously.

"Oh my god, you like, have to sing another song!" cheered Ginger. Rachel looked apprehensive, as if she wasn't sure if she was being made fun of, but Noah knew that Ginger was sincere.

"Sing your last song for us, Rachel," Matt said.

She blushed again, and he could almost feel the heat spread across her cheek. She motioned to Artie, who rolled forward with an acoustic guitar on his lap. On a different day, Noah would have been spellbound by the Les Paul that was in front of him – it was a beautifully made guitar. Today, nothing could draw him from Rachel's face.

Artie began to strum the guitar and Rachel stood slightly to the side in front of him. Instead of closing her eyes or looking around the room, Rachel positioned herself almost directly in front of him, and stared at him as she began to sing.

Would you be the wind to blow me home  
Would you be a dream  
On the wings of a poem  
And if we were walking through a crowd  
Well you know I'd be proud

If you call my name out loud  
Do you suppose that I would come running?  
Do you suppose I'd come at all?  
I suppose I would

The guitar music began to pick up and sounded more cheerful than it had before. Rachel was beginning to really get into the song, lightly dancing, her hippie dress swirling around her.

And if we were walking  
Down a dead end street  
Would you be the one to let our eyes meet  
Or would you just keep on walking  
Down to the turn around  
'cause you know I'd be proud

He knew that she was calling him out for the way he avoided her in the hallways. The way he would never raise his gaze to meet hers; not after the failed slushie incident.

If you call my name out loud  
Do you suppose that I would come running?  
Do you suppose I'd come at all?  
I suppose I would

Rachel's smile as she sang now became a little more wisful, her expression more forlorn and unsure.

And if I was gone from the land we know  
Would you be the dawn  
And let your beauty still show  
And if you were walking  
And heard the cold night coming  
Would you call my name  
'cause you know I'd come running

When she sang the last lines of the stanza she was practically belting out the lyrics, attempting to balm him and absolve him of the pain he had caused her.

If you'd call my name out loud  
Do you suppose that I would come running?  
Do you supposed I'd come at all?

She paused for a moment, Artie had paused at the same time, indicating that the next lyrics Noah heard would tell him how she would respond when he sang to her.

You know I would

You know I would

You know I would

You know I would

I'd come running

I'd come running

She breathed out, her eyes focused on him. Hauntingly, she closed her eyes and sang:

If you'd call my name out loud

The room exploded into applause and everyone leapt to their feet. Noah watched as she was surrounded by the glee kids, being praised by them. He watched her turn to look for him, and he remained stationary in his seat. He was having a hard time maintaining the façade that he didn't care, as a few tears had rolled down his face when she had told him that she would come running, all he had to do was call her name. All he had to do was speak when he called her at night, and she would be there, she would be his.

All of this time she had been waiting for him, hoping for him. She had never given up on him. _It doesn't matter_ he thought. It doesn't matter if this is all I ever get to have of her, if all I can ever be to her is a friend, then that's all I will be. I need to have her in my life.

After he locked eyes with her she was pulled into a hug by Kurt, and he lost sight of her for a second. When she was able to emerge from the crowd, he saw her beginning to search for him in the room.

"Okay guys, settle down," Mr. Schuester said, rising to his feet. "We still have one more performance today.

Everyone quieted down and sat back in their chairs. They were all looking nervously at him, as if they couldn't believe that he might actually break the wall of silence and participate in glee.

"Noah, are you ready?" Mr. Schue asked him gently, playing to the façade.

As he stood up and gathered his guitar in his hand, he saw Rachel burst into the biggest smile he had ever seen on her face. It wasn't the _I've got a secret_ smile, or the _I've got the lead_ smile. It wasn't a smile he had ever seen before, and he loved that it was directed at him. He knew that what he was about to do was the right thing; the best thing he could do to get back into her heart.

"I'm ready," he said, and walked down the risers to the floor.

* * *

The songs Rachel sings are "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap, "Wise Up" by Aimee Mann, and "Out Loud" by Dispatch. Listen to them if you haven't already! Beautiful songs.


	20. I Don't Want to Live Alone

**A/N: Sorry so short, but I felt that it was powerful and packed a big punch anyway. Less than 24 hours until "Wheels!" As always, please read and review.**

**Disclaimer: What part of I don't own this do you not understand?

* * *

**She had wanted to wow him. She knew that the only way she could force him to hear her was to sing her words to him. She had agonized over her song choices and had bullied the orchestra into practicing with her. She wasn't going to leave anything to chance.

She had planned her appearance based on the hippie feel of her final song, her message of longing for Noah. She wanted to catch his attention, to show him that things could change. That things could get better.

She had been beyond nervous when she began to sing, because she wasn't sure if Noah would understand what she was trying to tell him. She was scared to lay her heart out on the line and have it be broken again.

As the music washed over her and the lyrics built, she lost herself a little bit more in the performance. By the middle of "Wise Up," she was beginning to loosen into the music and it felt natural to be explaining things to him in this way.

When Artie began to strum the opening chords of "Out Loud," she didn't even try to pretend that she wasn't singing this song to him, just for him. She turned and faced him head on, staring him in the eyes the entire time she sang until the pause at the end of the song. When she closed her eyes she could picture him leaning towards her in her bedroom, eyelids closing, lips smoothly pressuring hers. She wanted him back. He had to know how she felt.

"If you call my name out loud," she sang, and concluded the song. The rest of her glee-mates erupted into cheers, but she needed to see him; needed to see his reaction. Her eyes sought his, and she could tell that though he was trying to keep it together, she had touched him. The tear tracks on his face were enough to prove that.

She was swept into a hug by Kurt and they were all still talking when Mr. Schuester called out, "Okay guys, settle down. We still have one more performance today." She looked nervously up the risers at Noah. She had no idea whether or not he was going to perform anything. He hadn't sung or spoken a word to anyone since the accident – she doubted he would change his mind now.

"Noah, are you ready?" Mr. Schue asked him. She sucked in her breath, wondering what his answer would be.

"I'm ready," Noah said, and rose to his feet. She was thrilled – beyond thrilled. She couldn't believe that he had prepared something for performance day; that he had chosen to participate in something, which meant that he was beginning to participate in life again. She glowed with pride for him and a smile burst across her face as he gathered his guitar and made his way down the risers to the center of the room.

He placed a single stool in the middle of the room and sat atop it, balancing his guitar on one knee. He had dimmed the lights in the room so that it appeared as if there was a small spotlight shining on him.

Rachel watched him as he positioned himself on the stool. Despite everything he had endured, after having withdrawn from everything, he was still beautiful. His warm eyes and full lashes drew you in, and his self-assured smirk kept you there and wanting more.

He began to strum the guitar and she watched his fingers move dexterously along the frets. He had good, strong hands, she thought. Working hands.

When she realized what song Noah was singing, she felt as if all of the air had been sucked from the room. With just the first word of the lyrics, she felt the tears well up in her eyes and drip down her face.

Would you know my name  
If I saw you in heaven  
Will it be the same  
If I saw you in heaven  
I must be strong, and carry on  
Cause I know I don't belong  
Here in heaven

She pressed her hands to her mouth to attempt to stifle the sobs that were threatening to rip through her. She watched him, her eyes burning into him as he sang his grief for his daughter.

Would you hold my hand  
If I saw you in heaven  
Would you help me stand  
If I saw you in heaven  
I'll find my way, through night and day  
Cause I know I just can't stay  
Here in heaven

Time can bring you down  
Time can bend your knee  
Time can break your heart  
Have you begging please  
Begging please

Rachel was not the only person crying in the room. Tears glimmered in Mr. Schuester's eyes, and Artie was comforting a crying Tina. Breaking her vision from the glee kids, she turned her eyes back to Noah. As he played the instrumental solo in the song, he wept openly, his eyes closed in as if he was in agony.

Beyond the door  
There's peace I'm sure.  
And I know there'll be no more...  
Tears in heaven

Would you know my name  
If I saw you in heaven  
Will it be the same  
If I saw you in heaven  
I must be strong, and carry on  
Cause I know I don't belong  
Here in heaven

Cause I know I don't belong  
Here in heaven

She wept as she watched him sing the final lyrics of the song. His fingers completed the progression and then he dropped his right hand to his side and looked down at the tile floor – the same tile floor where Quinn's blood had spattered in little drops.

"I dedicate that song to my daughter, Leah Puckerman. I hope that one day I get to meet her and tell her how much I love her," Noah choked through his tears. The glee room was silent, save for the weeping of the team members. Tears coursed down Rachel's cheeks and she closed her eyes, wishing for what might have been.

She wanted to run to him, to hold him, to comfort him. She wanted to kiss away his tears and tell him that someday it would be better. But before she could move from her seat, Noah was wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve and readjusting the guitar.

Behind him, the drummer from the jazz band settled onto the drum seat. Mutedly, the drummer picked out a basic rhythm almost in tune with a heartbeat. Noah quietly strummed the guitar, and he raised his eyes to the glee kids, glancing at each of them as he sang.

One by one  
We force ourselves  
Turn it on  
It comes in waves

Try to find  
Maybe this time  
Don't turn your head  
it's easy to forget how we were

Noah's voice whispered over the "were" and the guitar work became more intricate. Behind him, the drummer kept the same steady, beating pace.

Once inside  
We've made it here  
We struggle with the lights  
They never go away

What have we learned  
It's the same old things  
That drive us here  
And never go away  
We are changed

Across the room from Noah, a violin began to wail out a mournful tune that layered over the drumbeat and the guitar. Noah's voice raised in its intensity and he sang:

Through the tides  
Make your way  
You'll find the time  
A comfort inside

Here I wait  
In the safe place  
Where we were so many years ago  
So many years ago

His words were building in urgency and in power. The music was swelling, the drumbeat pulsing, and the violin singing on top of everything else.

One by one  
We close our eyes  
And returned to that place  
As a thousand nights go by

One by one  
We close our eyes  
And returned to that place  
As a thousand nights went by

Noah's voice lingered over the room, his haunting tune still hanging in the air. Everyone began to applaud for him and as they began to rise from their seats he motioned them back and down. Everyone settled back into their chairs worriedly – they had all expected Rachel to do 3 songs. She was Rachel Berry. But Noah Puckerman? He hadn't been the biggest overachiever lately, so him doing 2 songs was outstanding. His performing 3 songs was like entering the twilight zone.

He moved the stool from the center of the room and lay his guitar in its case by the far wall. As he adjusted his stage, the pianist rolled the piano forward and a small string orchestra set up to the left of the piano. Once everyone was in place, Noah clasped his hands in front of him and took a deep breath.

There is no future -  
There is no past  
Thank God  
This moment's not the last

His voice rang through the room, clear and powerful and commanding. Rachel watched as he moved closer to the piano.

There's only us  
There's only this  
Forget regret  
Or life is yours to miss

As he sang his stride became more purposeful, and he reached the piano and turned to face straight ahead, straight into Rachel's eyes. She watched him turn and then turned in shock when the rest of the glee kids stood from their chairs and walked forward. When they reached their predetermined positions they turned and faced her straight on. She sucked in a gasp as they sang:

No other road no other way  
No day but today

As their voices rang out, Noah emerged through the center of the group to stand straight in front of her. Again, his voice rang clear as the boys in the group hummed the tune and the girls sang back-up.

I can't control  
My destiny  
I trust my soul  
My only goal  
Is just to be

Noah turned and began to pace in front of her, his eyes alternately pleading with her and ignoring her. She watched as he ran his hands through his peach-fuzz and the boys began to sing back-up while the girls hummed.

Will I lose my dignity  
Will someone care  
Will I wake tomorrow  
From this nightmare

The orchestra began to swell and the girls began to move through the guys and together voices rang out, the girls and the girls singing:

Without you  
The hand gropes  
The ear hears  
The pulse beats  
Life goes on  
But I'm gone  
'Cause I die  
Without you  
I die without you  
I die without you  
No day but today  
I die without you

The group continued to dance in the background as Noah stopped pacing and faced her once again. He sang directly to her, the group's background voices fading lightly. Noah's voice was bold and strong as he sang:

There's only now  
There's only here  
Give in to love  
Or live in fear  
No other path  
No other way  
No day but today  
No day but today  
No day but today  
No day but today

He threw his head back as he belted the last lyrics and she watched the vein in his neck strain and his t-shirt stretch across his chest. Gathering behind hi, the glee chorus joined him in a last exultation of:

No day but today!

The orchestra concluded and the voices stopped singing, but she couldn't stop staring at him. He was staring at her in earnest, and all she could do was sit and stare at him. He had orchestrated an entire musical number for her from one of her all-time favorite musicals. He had opened himself up to everyone to involve them in this surprise for her. And she felt sure that it was a surprise intended for her. She thought about it for a moment, and she felt a grin begin to spread across her face.

She stood from her chair as if in a trance and walked to the center of the glee room. She could see Mr. Schuester in the periphery of the room, tracking her movement. Behind Noah, the glee kids stared at her, watching every step she took.

She walked up to him and stopped just a few inches from his body.

"I knew you would come back to me," she whispered, and as he tilted his head down to meet hers he pulled her into his arms. With the glee kids cheering and Mr. Schuester clapping as they looked on, Noah lowered his face the rest of the way and she felt electricity crackle through her as his kiss healed her heart.

* * *

The songs Noah sings are "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton, "Eastern Glow," by the Album Leaf, and "Finale B" from the musical Rent. I don't own anything to do with them, either, but you should listen to them. Duh.


	21. God Knows, Got to Make it on My Own

**A/N: This is a very short chapter, but I have to have a small out-patient surgery tomorrow and I'm tired, so I split this chapter into 2 segments, which works out better for the song, anyway. Hope you enjoy! **Also, holy craptastic Batman - Mark Salling was HOT tonight! Good God, that man is gorgeous. Seriously. Wow.**  
**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

* * *

**He couldn't believe his luck. His heart had nearly burst during his last performance; he had lain it all down on the line for her. Every word he sang, every time he looked at her, he was trying to tell her that he needed her. And when he had let the last note carry out into silence, he had waited with anticipation for her response.

She didn't disappoint. He watched as their special-secret smile crept across her face and she walked down to him. He was vaguely aware of the rest of his glee-mates staring at them intently, but as she walked towards him their eyes caught and he felt as if he was burning with love for her.

She stepped closer to him and he reached his arms around her, finally feeling the warmth of her skin for the first time in months.

"I knew you would come back to me," she whispered, and relief flooded through him and he leaned his head down towards hers. He pulled her against his body and she felt as if she fit perfectly to him. The centers of her warmth were perfectly placed to match up with his, and when she moved against him he felt a little _zing_ of perfection.

When he finally got to kiss her, he felt as if every chick-flick his mom had made him watch had lied to him. Fireworks in the background? Nah. Total disappearance of watching crowds? No way. _Not even close_, Noah thought, and parted his lips slightly.

He could feel Rachel respond to his kiss – her lips parted open and felt her dart her tongue across his lips, tasting him. She sighed and he almost lost control of himself in the middle of the glee room. As it was, he deepened the kiss and she opened her mouth more fully to him. She tasted absolutely _amazing_ he thought – better than before. He was trying to come up with enough adjectives to describe the way she tasted when he heard a _hmm hmm_ from behind him.

He slowly pulled away from Rachel, catching her lower lip in his teeth and then pecking her lightly on the lips.

"Yes?" he queried, the grin on his face transforming him.

"Maybe we'll end our set with that at regionals," Mr. Schuester said. "And maybe we'll end it just like that…Now take that kind of behavior somewhere it belongs – like the backseat of a car, perhaps?" Mr. Schue joked, and they all laughed.

All of the glee kids began to approach him, congratulating him on his performance; laughing and joking about having been in on Rachel's surprise. He heard words be spoken, felt hugs from many people, but he only had eyes for her. He left the group of glee-kids and walked back over to her.

"Ready to go?" he asked her, and held out his hand.

"Yes," she replied, and the smile on her face made him the happiest he'd ever been in his life. He gathered his guitar case and backpack and met her at the door.

"Thanks, guys!" he called as he and Rachel strolled out arm-in-arm.

They walked to his truck in silence, Rachel leaning her head lightly against his arm as they walked. When they got to his truck, he opened the passenger door for her and lifted her inside.

He shut her door gently and raced around to the other side of the car. He jumped in and turned to face her. She was leaning against the side of the cab and when he got in, she began to lean towards him.

He slid across the seat and took her face in his hands. He rained kisses all over her face – across her eyelids and forehead, down her nose, on her cheekbones and jaw-line. She was sighing rapidly and he trailed his kisses up the left side of her face the tender area just beneath her ear.

She gasped and dug her fingers into his shoulders, pulling him closer. His tongue flicked across her skin and he couldn't believe that she actually tasted as good as she smelled. He sucked lightly on her earlobe and he could feel the goosebumps raise on her arms when his teeth grazed the skin.

"Wait," Rachel said, pushing lightly against his chest. "Not here. Not now. And we need to talk first," she said.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked her. His sister was spending the night with her best friend tonight, and his mom was working a 12-hour shift at Lima Regional.

"Take me home?" she asked him quietly. He slipped away from her and buckled his seatbelt. He put the truck in gear and they rode in silence. It was odd to him – they used to talk about everything nonstop, and he would daydream about what it would be like to kiss her. Now, he knew what it was like to kiss her, and all he was able to do was daydream about how to talk to her without actually talking to her.

He pulled into her driveway and was relieved to see that neither of her fathers' cars were in the garage. The last time he had seen them, he had not been at his best. He was sure they understood, but it was still odd to think of seeing them again.

He put the truck into park and then turned it off. The silence stretched through the truck cab, and he sat there looking at Rachel. "What do you want to do now?" he asked her.

"Come with me," she told him, and got out of the truck. He followed her in silence, watching the way her dress moved as she swished her tiny little hips. He watched her hair flutter in the breeze and he was so drawn to her he was beginning to feel an ache that could only be relieved by kissing her, touching her.

She led him up to her room and sat him down on the bed. She took off her shoes and socks and sat crossed-legged, staring at him.

"Why wouldn't you talk to me?" she asked him, and he saw a tear run down her cheek. Of all the things he could be doing right now, this was the one thing he had hoped not to have to do yet.

"I…couldn't. When Leah died, and they told me in the hospital I literally lost my grip on reality. Finn said I broke free of his hold on me and attempted to attack the driver of the other car. He and your dads stopped me, but I didn't even know what I was doing. It was as if I had lost all purpose, all direction, all definition," he couldn't look at her while he told her this. It was still so fresh, it was still so much.

"And then, when I came back to the hospital to see you, and to see Quinn, you were asleep, and I didn't want to wake you up. But you just looked so determined, even in your sleep, and it reminded me of everything you had been determined about and I couldn't bear that pain. I retreated into myself. I was in a hole that I could not climb my way out of." He had gotten up off of the bed and was pacing in front of her.

"I kind of lost my mind, Rachel, and everyday when you would show up it would drive me just a little bit crazier because I thought you were only coming because you felt obligated to do so, even though you were mad at me for kissing you. It felt like you were coming because you _had_ to be there, not that you _needed_ to be there. I know that's stupid!" he cut her off when she opened her mouth.

"I know, now, that that's not what it was. But I was in a bad place and I couldn't make anything good out of anything. I couldn't see any light anywhere around me. And by the time I knew that I needed help to get out of where I was, I had pushed everyone away."

"Why didn't you tell me you named her?" Rachel asked him, and he heard her voice crack.

"Because I wanted to be the one to tell you when I was ready to tell you why I chose the name Leah. Because it involves telling you about how I've had a daydream or two about having you be the mother of my children – including the one you were helping me to fight for custody of." He sat back down on the edge of her bed and put his head in his hands, facing away from her.

"Rachel, I miss her so much," he whispered, and began to cry. He had been nearly overcome with emotion when he had sung "Tears in Heaven" for her during his glee performance. Talking about her with Rachel made it more real than anything else, because she had been so involved.

"I miss her, too," Rachel said to him, and she moved closer behind him, placing her head on his shoulder. Hearing Rachel said this made him cry harder. He had known how much she had cared about Leah. He felt awful for having cut her out of his life, for having denied her knowledge of the daughter that could have one day been hers as well.

He felt her pull him backwards onto the bed and she positioned him so that they were spooning inward, arms around each other.

"I'm sorry I let you down," he told her, looking deep into her eyes.

"You didn't let me down, Noah," she told him. "I just thought I had lost you, because you had lost yourself. I just didn't know how to get you back to yourself again."

"You helped me everyday. Thank-you for always answering the phone," he chuckled to her.

"I knew eventually, you would answer. I knew that someday you would begin to climb out of the hole you were in, and that you'd finally be able to see me and reach out. I just had to wait," she told him.

"Thank-you for waiting," he whispered to her and leaned across her bed to kiss her. Their lips were just beginning to meet and his fingers were just starting to wind their way though her hair when he heard the front door open and Mr. Berry call out, "Is that Noah Puckerman's truck out front, Rachel?"

She pulled away from him as if she had received a giant shock and came to the top of the stairs. "Yes, daddy," she said.

Disappointed, Noah sat on the edge of the bed and pulled his shoes back on. He met Rachel at the doorway and as he passed her to go down the stairs he whispered to her, "this isn't over yet."

He saw a shiver ripple through her and he smirked a little bit as he made his way down the stairs to talk to Mr. Berry.


	22. So Baby Can't You See

**A/N: Warning! I began writing this while still under sedation, so please forgive any typos or inconsistencies you see, and point them out to me. Additionally, my surgery went well, thanks for the well-wishes. Only two more chapters left... it makes me sad to see it wind down.**

**Disclaimer: I want to own stuff, but they just won't let me.

* * *

**

When she had heard her father come through the front door she knew that her physical reunion with Noah had been cut short. She went to the top of the stairs to explain to her father that, yes, Noah was back.

When he brushed past her and whispered "this isn't over yet," a shiver rippled through her and she was glad her father's attention was now focused on Noah. She followed him down the stairs, watching the muscles in his back smooth and bunch under his t-shirt. As he went down the stairs his shirt crept up a little bit so that she could see a smooth strip of skin just about the level of his boxers. As if he had felt her eyes on him, he turned around and raised an eyebrow at her.

Blushing, she walked past him and into the kitchen, where she began to set out the ingredients for dinner. She sent Noah into talk to her father alone. A few minutes into their discussion, her other father appeared in the doorway and said, "Rach, honey! You're cooking! And Noah's truck is in the driveway… it feels like we've gone back in time."

How right he was – whenever Noah would come over to work on the custody case, she would make dinner while Noah discussed what they had been working on with her fathers. Then, when dinner was ready, they would sit at the table together and discuss school, glee, the case, and life. It was like they were already a family – no assembly required.

"Do you need any help with dinner?" her father asked her, and when she shook her head, no, he opened the fridge and got out 3 beers. Rachel watched him curiously, but he just popped the tops off the 3 bottles and walked into the family room with them.

_I suppose that's Daddy's way of showing Noah that they think of him as a responsible man_, she thought, and turned her attention back to dinner. She had bought some salmon over the weekend and was going to make salmon in a beurre blanc sauce, and the sauce itself was very tricky.

By the time she had gotten everything prepared, Dad had come back into the kitchen to get another set of beers.

"Almost ready, princess?" he asked her and smiled as he placed the bottle opener back down on the counter.

"Almost," she replied, her concentration on the food.

"Good. We'll get the table set and then be good to go," her father replied, and he walked back into the family room with the beers.

She was standing at the sink a few moments later when she felt strong arms wrap around her waist. She gripped the counter in front of her for support as he buried his face into her hair and pressed himself up against her. When he whispered in her ear, his breath was so hot and moist that she nearly melted against the counter.

"Your dads sent me in to get silverware and set the table," he whispered, and she was amazed that he could take such an ordinary task as setting the table and turn it into the sexiest, most devious chore in history.

She felt his hands graze down her throat, between her breasts, and then down her sides. "But this seems more fun," he whispered, and turned her around so that her back was to the sink counter.

"Noah," she warned quietly, but he was already kissing her and she felt absolute bliss. His mouth really was perfectly made for hers. It was as if they experienced a permanent meld when he pressed his lips against hers and he tasted spicy, like cinnamon. She could feel herself beginning to throw caution away and she pushed her hands against his chest, breaking his hold on her.

"Not yet," she whispered, but as she turned back to the sink, she deliberately swished her ass against the front of his jeans. He made a small little groan and then released her, walking to the silverware drawer. She could feel him watching her as he got out the silverware and she exaggerated every movement she made to give him something good to look at.

She smiled when he shut the drawer a bit more forcefully than he previously would have done. _So this is what it's like to be a tease_ she thought, and portioned the salmon, rice, green beans, and sauce out onto plates.

"Dinner!" she called, and the men came single-file into the room to retrieve their plates. She sucked in her breath as they all walked in – the three most important men in her life all in the same room for the first time in the months. She was overcome with happiness, she had missed this so much. It wasn't like she believed she had to be domestic to win Noah, or that her fathers pushed all the cooking and stuff on her (they wanted her to be a strong, independent woman) but when she cooked for the four of them it felt… right. As if she could do it for a long time without complaint.

They took their seats at the dinner table and began to settle into the old routine. Seasonings were passed, conversation commenced, and the first bites of food were eaten. When Noah took his first bite of salmon with beurre blanc sauce, he made a small noise that sounded like a mini-gasm. Rachel choked on her green beans and her eyes were watering as her daddy thumped her on the back.

She glared at Noah, who smiled deviously. _So this is what he's like as a tease_ she thought. Well, two could play that game. They spent the rest of dinner making slight innuendoes at each other, and discussing school and life with her dads. Her dad was just beginning to clear away the dinner dishes when her daddy asked about Leah.

She froze in her chair, her eyes focusing on Noah. Her dad stopped in the doorway, his arms laden with dishes. Noah had seemed to come to a complete halt, and he had closed his eyes as if he was asking for strength. _They must have talked about her some already_ she thought. Otherwise what had all the beer and conversation been about? But her daddy had just asked if they could go and visit Leah. That was different.

She was waiting for his response. He opened his eyes, but kept them cast down at the tablecloth. She reached her hand over to his and grabbed it in a tight squeeze. He smiled appreciatively at her.

"Mr. Berry," Noah began, and she could hear the tears choking his voice. "I'd be honored if you would like to visit her, sir, but I would like to take Rachel there first." Her eyes welled with tears and she stood to move closer to him. He clung to her hand as if it were a life-line.

"Of course, son…" her father said. "It's just… with all the preparations you two had been doing, we almost felt as if we were going to get to be honorary grandparents, and we'd like to say good-bye."

"Thank-you," Noah whispered, and his grip on Rachel tightened even harder.

"Dad and I will clean up down here," her father moved to a lighter subject. "Why don't you and Noah go upstairs and get your homework done?" he asked.

Wordlessly, Noah stood from his chair and Rachel walked with him to the stairs. She motioned for him to lead the way, so she watched him again as he went up the stairs. This time she was not watching for a strip of skin – she was watching for a sign that this had been too much, too soon, that he was hurt and was about to run away.

When he got into her room he sat down on her bed and she closed the door behind her. She leaned against the doorframe, staring at him, drinking him in. He looked as if he had been subjected to torture and then released, she thought.

She padded across the carpet towards him and stood in front of him. He pulled her closer to the bed and wrapped his arms around her waist, burying his head into her stomach. She could feel the warm wetness where he began to cry. She rubbed her hands soothingly over his back, through his hair.

"It's just so hard that she's gone," he whisper-cried and she gathered him tighter to her.

"I know," she whispered, "I know." She was crying now, too, which wasn't a huge surprise because all she had done for months was cry over how everything had ended.

She felt him pull away from her slightly and looked down at him. She could see the pain swimming in his eyes, but instead of the dead-eye look he had had for months, she could see a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of the old Noah lurking in his eyes.

"Do you want to go see her?" he asked her, and her heart was nearly overwhelmed by the offer and by the pain. She wasn't sure if she could handle it so soon, but she knew that she had to be strong for him. She also knew that he needed to go to her, and she wanted to be the one to support him when he needed it.

"Of course," she replied, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. She dried his face with the hem of her dress and slipped back into her flip-flops. She rummaged around in her closet and found a sweater that would go with the dress – the temperature was warming up but the nights were still too cool for bare shoulders.

They walked down the stairs hand-in-hand, his hand trailing back to meet hers in the middle. They walked into the kitchen where her fathers were still wrapping up the remnants of dinner.

"Leaving so soon?" her father asked her as he spied the two of them standing in the doorway.

"We're going to go visit Leah," she told her fathers, and they nodded their understanding. She was shocked that she had said Noah's daughter's name out loud – she had never done so before, and she could feel that it had shaken Noah even more. She squeezed gently at his hand to reassure him.

"Take all the time you need," Daddy said.

"We trust you," Dad added, and then said, "the both of you."

"Thanks Dad, Daddy," she said as Noah found his voice and said, "Thank-you, Mr. Berry, Mr. Berry."

They smiled lightly and went back to their clean-up, not wanting to push the subject into heavier territory. She was so proud of her fathers – they were such good and understanding people, and she was honored by the way they accepted and treated Noah.

She felt his grip on her loosen as they turned to walk out the front door. Having her hand clasped in his felt natural, it felt right. It felt as if her tiny hand had been made to slip into his large hand – they fit perfectly together.

He opened the truck door for her and helped her in. She watched him as he walked around the front of the truck to get in. He was moving with a purpose – she could tell that this was something that he both wanted and did not want to do.

When he turned the truck on and put it into gear, she twined her fingers through his, not knowing what to say. He backed out of her driveway, and as he began to pull away from the house, he loosened her fingers from his and pushed play on his CD player.

He slipped her fingers back into his and she heard the wail of a harmonica cut through the cab.

"I've been listening to this a lot ever since Artie played it on performance day," he told her, and she began to recognize the song. It was Bruce Springsteen's "The River;" and the sound of the harmonica was haunting as the song opened.

She listened to him sing lightly, the words always just barely discernible from the road noise and the music. As the song broke for the instrumental segment, he glanced at her and told her, "there's a really great line coming up, and it makes me think about everything and about how good it could have been. It also makes me wonder about how bad it could have been, and it helps me put things into perspective…" he trailed off as Bruce started singing again.

She could feel the tension building and feel the emotion welling as Bruce began to thunder:

"But I remember us riding in my brother's car  
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir  
At night on them banks I'd lie awake  
And pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take"

Noah's voice began to build alongside Bruce's and she could feel the goosebumps rising on her skin as he sang, his voice etched with pain. She knew he was singing for Leah, for Quinn, for her, for himself…

"Now those memories come back to haunt me  
they haunt me like a curse  
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true  
Or is it something worse"

His voice cracked and he had tears in his eyes, but he continued to sing along to the CD, his voice gaining strength even as Bruce's was beginning to fade out:

"that sends me down to the river  
though I know the river is dry  
That sends me down to the river tonight  
Down to the river  
my baby and I  
Oh down to the river we ride…"

The harmonica began to wail again and Noah squeezed her hand gently.

"It's that line that always gets me," he explained to her. "'Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?' I've been trying to figure that out. I had all of these dreams, all of these plans, even before Quinn got pregnant, I had dreams and plans. And when she told me she was pregnant, and that I was going to be a father, and at the same time, not going to be a father, all of those old dreams got thrown out the window. I had new dreams then – I dream of her every night, Rachel. I dream about saving her every night and every night I come so close and then fail, and every night the pain is just as bad as it was the night before. That's when I call you. That's when I needed you most because I couldn't protect myself from those dreams…"

She held his hand tightly, tears coursing down her face. She didn't know what to say to him, but he appeared to be on a roll, so she let him continue, reveling in the sound of his voice.

"And I wonder what the answer to that question is. Is a dream a lie if it doesn't come true? I held those dreams about being a father so close for so long, that they became almost a reality – they would have become a reality, and so I wonder if those dreams were just lies, or if it's something worse than a lie, as if God had decided I wasn't good enough to be her father, and was taking her back from me."

He was crying now and his body was shaking, his voice rough. "And I would have been a good father, goddammit!" he shouted, and his voice reverberated through the cab of the truck. "I just needed the chance," he whispered, and then fell silent as he pulled into a parking lot. They had arrived at the cemetery.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and slid next to him and threw her arms around him. She held him while he cried, but didn't say anything. He didn't want words from her – no words could heal what damage had been inflicted upon him. Only time and actions could mend those wounds. She knew that and she let him cry on her until his breathing eased and he could control the shaking of his body.

"Let's go," he told her, and she was filled with apprehension. She had never been to a grave before, not for someone she knew. And she felt she did know Leah. She had known about everything that was going on with her developmentally, she had watched her grow through sonogram pictures and the pop of Quinn's belly. She knew about Noah's plans for her future, she knew how she would have been fought for and raised. She had never met the little girl, had never gotten to know her personality, but she still felt as if she knew her on a deep, personal level.

They walked hand-in-hand through the cemetery in silence. Twilight was falling, adding an eerie quality to the already haunting graves. Noah walked the path as if he was intimately familiar with it, and she wondered how many times he had had to come down here alone to visit his daughter.

He stopped, and she halted just a half-step behind him. There in front of him was a small tombstone with the name "Leah Puckerman" inscribed on it, and the date, February 7th, 2010. It was simple and yet beautiful and achingly painful to look at. Noah dropped to his knees and she knelt beside him, taking his hand.

She wasn't sure what to do, what to say. She wasn't sure what sort of support he needed, or how to act. She knelt next to him, holding his hand in hers, and she felt her tears begin to flow again.

"Leah," she heard Noah whisper, and she squeezed her eyes shut at the pain in his voice. There was so much pain that it sounded as if he was choking on it, but at the same time, she heard the immense amount of love he had for her.

"This is Rachel, Leah. I've wanted to bring her here to you for a long time, because you deserved to know her. She's a good woman. She was helping me to claim you, so that I could be your daddy," he whispered to his daughter through his tears.

Rachel listened to him tell his daughter about her, and she knew that this must be what he had done every day when he had left the glee room and she had sat outside his house waiting for him to come home, hoping to intercept him. She was glad that he had been able to find the strength to come and talk to his daughter – no matter what you believed religiously, it was always said that going and speaking to someone as if they were still there, or could hear you, was a way to ease the pain from the soul. She thought that it might be working, as she had seen Noah begin to open himself up to others again.

She sat there and listened to him until he fell quiet and just stared at the gravestone. She wasn't sure what he was thinking, or what he wanted her to do, but the silence was beginning to creep in on her, and it was falling dark quickly.

"Leah, I wish I had been able to know you," she began, and she felt Noah tense at her words. She wasn't sure if he wanted her to stop, but she wasn't sure she _could_ stop, even if he wanted her to. The words began to flow freely from her mouth and she began to tell Leah about her father.

As she spoke, Noah leaned into her and rested his head on her shoulder, wrapping his arms around her. Rachel rambled on as only Rachel Berry could do, but there came a point where she wasn't able to say anything else.

"I think you should know, Leah, that I love your father. And I'm going to try to take care of him for you, okay?" she whispered, and Noah buried his face in her hair.

"I love you," she whispered to him, and turned her face to his. She saw the burning in his eyes, and then he closed them and whispered, "I love you, too." She felt him rise from the ground and pull her up next to him.

"Let's go home," she whispered, and they walked hand-in-hand back to the truck.

The ride back to her house was spent in silence, the volume on the CD player turned down too low to be anything audible. Her fingers were still locked into his, and after the words they had exchanged in the cemetery, they felt like they were laced with electric current.

Unable to control herself, she burst into a small giggle. Nervously, she glanced at him and attempted to subdue her expression.

"What's so funny?" Noah asked her, his eyes slightly apprehensive at what she could possibly find amusing after such an emotional experience.

"Well," Rachel began nervously. "It's not _funny_, it's just we were sitting here in silence, and I thought about all the times I almost told you I loved you, and all of the time times you must have almost told me that you loved me, and I just thought that it was a little strange, a little odd, that the first time we actually said those words to each other, which are supposed to be the epitome of romance, we were…" she trailed off.

"In a cemetery," Noah finished for her, and she saw a slight smile tease at the corners of his mouth.

"It is kind of weird when you think about it," she said to him, and the smile teased a little bit more. "I wonder if people will think we're goth now…" she mused out loud.

"Definitely not goth," he replied, and she could feel that he was forcing a bit of the cheery tone into his voice.

"I meant what I said," she told him as he pulled into her driveway.

"I know you did," he responded, and he turned towards her as he shut off the truck. "I meant what I said, too."

"Are you coming back in?" she asked him, nervously.

Instead of answering her, he got out of the truck and opened her door for her. He led her up the steps to the front door, and fished around in his pockets. When he found what he was looking for, he held it up for her to see, and she smiled hugely at him.

"You still carry your key with you!" she exclaimed, happy that he hadn't chucked it into the lake or stuffed it into the back of a drawer somewhere.

"Always," he replied, and bent down to kiss her. He was so forceful, so urgent in his kiss that her knees almost buckled from the intensity of it. He pulled away from her and she felt oxygen rush into her lungs and the blood begin to pump again in her veins.

He turned the key in the lock and opened the door for her. Warily, she started for the stairs, hoping not to see her fathers. She was lucky. They were already in their room, TV sounding. She crept up the stairs with him and secured him in her room.

She heard him sit on the bed and she turned to him as she locked the door behind her. She walked over to him, and instead of saying anything, she hitched her dress up around her knees and straddled him.

She leaned forward and began to kiss him, pushing him back against the pillows on her bed. As she kissed him his hands traced the sides of her body and she felt little chills were he left finger-trails across her body. She deepened the kiss and he tangled his hands in her hair.

When she could barely breathe she leaned back from the kiss and settled her face into the curve of his neck. She inhaled and breathed in his scent. Long before she had ever spoken to Noah Puckerman, she had decided that the best scent a man could have was a combination of soap, Aqua di Gio, a slight hint of cigarette (not that she would ever date a smoker), and that indescribable _man_ smell. The first time she had ever nestled her face into his neck and breathed in, she discovered that he had captured her perfect smell. It was if it had been bottled and presented just for her.

She breathed in his scent and felt at home in his arms. She kissed him again and he flipped her over so that she was on her back. She looked up at him and saw the love in his eyes.

"Noah?" she whispered, and she saw his eyes pull together in concern.

"Yes, Rachel?" he asked her, whispering back.

"I want you to be my first," she said, and she lowered her eyes after she said it, insecure and unable to predict what he would say.

Instead of saying anything, he began to kiss her again, more softly, more sweetly, than ever before.


	23. God knows, gods know, gods know

**A/N: It's short, but it's intense. I literally had to stop writing. Just as an FYI, this is the chapter I centered my whole rating of "M" around. Please don't read it if you're easily offended. It's rated M for a reason.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but a bottle of water and a packet of peanut butter M&M's. Mmmm...

* * *

**He had followed her up the stairs apprehensively. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he needed to hear from her, so much he wanted to _do_ with her to make things right, but all he could think of was the fact that there were a lot of things that he wanted to do _to_ her, and how he wanted to do them all right now.

He was also terrified at what might happen because her fathers were like, right fucking _there_ across the hall, and they trusted him with their daughter and had believed in him when nobody but Rachel did. He didn't want to break faith with them. He was also terrified because the last time he had done anything like this (like be someone's first) he had ended up almost becoming a father. Which was scary as shit, and he didn't think he could go through something like that again anytime soon.

And then on top of all of that…it was _Rachel Berry_. He had tortured her for years, dated her for week, and had then become closer to her than he had ever been to anyone before. She had become the world to him; she was literally his guiding light in crawling from the hole he had been in since Leah's death, and she was _important_. He had never done something like this with anyone where it had ever been important. He used to be a get-in and get-out kind of guy, because it hadn't meant anything to him.

That was what was the most different. Sex had never meant anything to him before. It had never been anything deemed as "special," but he knew that for Rachel this would be something of immensely huge importance in her life. He knew, without a single doubt, that this would be a monumental occasion for her, and that this would definitely mean something to her. And he wasn't sure if he could handle being that guy – the guy she hung all of her hopes on.

He didn't want to let her down; ever. The way she made him feel (safe, secure, more whole) made him want to never be without her – for as long as was humanly possible. He needed her in his life, he needed to be the one to make her smile, to make her laugh. He _hated_ it when she cried, and she had been crying so much lately, largely due to his actions and inactions. He never wanted to see her face if he disappointed her.

She lets him lead into the room and Noah crosses the carpet and perches on the edge of her bed. He kicks off his shoes and quietly watches her as she turns to click the lock on the door behind her. She stands still for a moment, her eyes burning into his and he can almost feel the heat that emanates from them. He thinks of how he once heard love described as "blazing" and how he had never understood the adjective until this second.

He watches her pad across the carpet and he can't help but think that she looks so goddamn _sexy_ in her hippie dress and sweater and then all of a sudden she's gathering the sides of her dress in her hands and then she's climbing onto the bed and she's _sweet Jesus_ straddling him.

His mind blanks for a millisecond as he realizes exactly where and how she's positioned herself, and then she kisses him and he's pulled quickly back to reality. He mouth is so soft against his, but she's kissing him hard, and her mouth opens and he feels her tongue sweep against the front of his lips and almost dies.

He opens his mouth to her and when he feels her tongue on his, a small groan escapes him and he feels bliss as they continue to kiss. As they're kissing he's thinking about how kissing her feels like the most natural thing in the world, how her taste is just made to be that wonderful and her tongue applies just the right pressure for him. It's as if she's perfectly tailor-made for him. He can't help but touch her, and he runs his hands down the sides of her body, feeling her strength. She (very slightly) bucks against him, and when he notices he drags his hands from her body and twines them into the strands of her hair.

When she stops kissing him and curls her head into his neck, he can feel the heat of her breath on his skin and he shivers. Her head is resting in crook of his shoulder and the scent of her hair is invading his scent sensors to the point where he can barely concentrate on anything _other_ than the scent of her hair.

He heard her inhale and then felt her move to kiss him again. As their mouths met he flipped her onto her back, so that she was positioned directly beneath him. She broke the kiss again and stared up at him with those huge, luminescent eyes.

"Noah?" she asked him, and he knew what she was about to tell him. He knew that he would never receive a greater honor in his life than to be chosen as her first. He knew that no matter what had happened in his lifetime, this would be the first time he had ever made love. He wasn't going to fuck her…he couldn't even think of it that way.

As much as he wanted to be with her, he also knew that this was a really big deal, and he wanted to make sure he got it right. That he wasn't going to hurt her. That it was as special as she wanted (and deserved) for it to be. He wasn't sure what to tell her.

"Yes, Rachel?" he asked, playing for time. His mind was whirling rapid-fire over the possible responses and what his heart and his head and his..._desires_ were telling him to do.

"I want you to be my first," she whispered to him, and his heart nearly broke when she lowered her gaze from his. He could tell from the way her body had tensed and the way that she had looked away from him that she was embarrassed to ask him. That for all her talk at celibacy club, she found it hard to admit out loud that she wanted sex.

He also knew that she was probably terrified, laying one of the most important things to her on the line. He knew that she would never get another first time. He knew that inside, she was probably freaking out about whether or not she would do it right, or whether or not she looked pretty, or whether or not she was remotely desirable.

He watched her lower her lashes to her cheek and the small movement was so beautiful to him. He knew that he loved her, and he knew that he would be a fool to deny her anything she could ever want. He knew that no matter what happened, it would be special because it would be done with love. He just didn't know how to tell her all of that, and he wanted her to understand.

Instead of opening his mouth and killing the mood and attempting to explain, he lowered his mouth to hers and tried to put everything he thought and felt into his kiss. It was a bitterly slow and aching kiss, the kind you pour your whole soul into. He applied pressure to her mouth and felt her respond warmly.

He pulled back from her and looked her searchingly in the eyes. He wanted to make sure that she was sure, and that she was…prepared.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked her, and closed his eyes, hoping that she would say yes. He didn't want to her to get scared – he didn't want to lose her again.

"Yes," she whispered, staring up at him. He could see from the look in her eyes that she absolutely trusted him; absolutely loved him. There was no question in her eyes about whether or not she was doing the right thing, and he loved her even more for trusting him that much.

"Do you have…" he trailed off, unsure of the polite and romantic way to ask if one's virgin lover has protection.

"I'm on the pill," she told him quietly.

He gazed at her, wanting to ask questions and just hold her, and wanting to be with her. He knew that it would be completely different from anything he had ever felt before. He loved her in a way that he didn't think he had been capable of.

"I love you," he whispered to her, and he began to kiss her again slowly.

She responded with a slow urgency that built in her kiss until she was kissing him roughly. He felt her hands run through his hair and down his neck, over the back of his shoulders. He felt her place her hands on his shoulders and pull him closer to her.

Instead of kissing her, he pulled himself slightly away from her body and began to trail kisses from her mouth to that sweet tender spot just below her left earlobe. He heard her gasp and he chuckled lightly against her skin. As he chuckled he felt the goosebumps rise on her skin and he kissed his way down her neck to the top of her collarbone.

Gently he gnawed on her collarbone, eliciting small gasps from Rachel. He swept his tongue lightly along the smooth hollow of her throat and then threaded his tongue lightly along the top edge of her strapless hippie dress. He moved his head slightly lower and took the small mound of her left breast into his mouth, running his tongue along the cotton fabric.

She gasped again and twitched her body up to meet him. She began to try to pull him closer to her, but he wanted to take this slow, make it sweet and memorable for her. He wanted to worship her.

He moved his attention from her breasts to her shoulders and began to gently nip and kiss at her skin. He moved down her right arm, pausing to place kisses on her bicep, on the crook of her elbow and down to her wrist. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed each of her fingertips before placing her arm down again and starting over with the left arm.

By the time he had finished kissing her fingers she was sighing sweetly beneath him and he pulled back from her hand, smiling.

"Come here," she whispered to him, and pulled him gently closer to her. He kissed her on her mouth and as he sank deeper into the kiss, he felt her tug his shirt up over his stomach, exhibiting his abs and pecs. She tugged harder at the shirt and he broke the kiss to sit back and strip it off over his head. He watched her as he removed his shirt and saw the absentminded grin leak across her face as she studied his body.

He wanted to smirk as he watched her ogle him, but kept his face composed. She seemed to snap out of it and reached her hands out to his belt buckle, undoing the clasp and then starting to shimmy his jeans down his hips.

"Go slow," he said to her, and he stood up to step out of his jeans. Almost at the same time, she rose from the bed to stand in front of him. She walked over to the wall and flipped the light switch. After he had stepped out of his pants and his eyes had adjusted to the new light, she held his eyes with hers and pulled his hands to her body.

She molded her hands onto the back of his, and controlled where he placed his fingers. She directed him to lift at the edge of the strapless dress and to pull the fabric slightly away from her body. She helped him to pull the dress down over her breasts and her stomach and down to her hips, where she let the dress fall and stepped backwards out of it, sliding back onto the bed.

She pulled him with her and he lay with her sideways across the bed. He repositioned her and began his exploration of her body anew. His mouth left trails of kisses down between her breasts and over the soft satin of her bra. She leaned forward so that he could undo the clasp of her bra and shivered when he pulled the straps down her arms.

He continued to kiss her, to taste her skin and he moved down her body. He gently pulled her panties down to her ankles and kissed her toes, her knees, her thighs, before moving towards that sweet spot in the middle of her legs. As his tongue moved over her she began to pull his boxers down with her toes until she couldn't reach any farther.

She giggled in frustration, and he moved to finish removing the boxers. He replaced his mouth with his fingers and moved back over her, kissing her once more.

"Rachel," he whispered to her, and he could feel her eyes on him in the dark.

"Noah?" she questioned softly.

"I love you," he whispered to her, and gently moved inside of her. He heard her hiss in pain, he felt her tense up on him as she adjusted to the new sensation. He remained completely still, trying not to cause her any harm.

"I love you," she whispered back to him, and began to move herself slightly around him. "I love you," she whispered again, and he repeated it to her, beginning to move into a rhythm with her that was the easiest thing in the whole world.

Being with her was _right_. He had never felt more perfect, and more whole than he felt in this moment. He felt as if he finally found his purpose in life, that he had finally found the place to call _home_ and the thought resonated with him as his body moved in tandem with Rachel's.

"I love you," he whispered to her again, and they repeated the words to each other, voices hitching and breaths gasping as they moved together in the darkness of her room.


	24. Author's Note and Apology

So sorry! I've been sick all day and I tried writing but it was just all crap. I know a lot of you are used to me updating daily, I have just felt like shit all day. Please forgive me. I will try to update tomorrow if I feel better. I want to do right by the last chapter, which is why I haven't updated today. Noah and Rachel deserve better than what I can give them at the moment. Thanks for understanding!


	25. I've Got to Break Free!

**A/N: Thank-you to everyone who has spent time reading this, adding this to your story favorites, adding this to your author alerts, and reviewing this story. I truly appreciate all of the support that I have received from you with regards to my first ever fanfiction. This chapter is especially dedicated to Sleeping to Dream about You, for all of her support. **

**Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing in this story. Anywhere. At all.

* * *

**She lay in the darkness listening to him sleep. It wasn't the first time they had fallen asleep next to each other, but it was the most important. She shifted slightly so that she could watch him sleeping.

His face was so...calm. Peaceful. As if there was an inner certainty that he had found and come to accept. When he was awake, he looked haunted, his eyes lifeless. When he slept, though, there was no trace of the agony, of the fear, of the loss that had plagued him for months. He looked as if he had been released from the terrible hold of the world for a moment and had been allowed to float free.

Her eyes swept from the small creases next to his eyes, down over his softly parted lips and to the smooth curves of his shoulders. His skin was so smooth, so soft, but it was also firm and supple. She moved down his shoulders to his guns (good _God_ his arms were lovely) and watched his right hand twitch against the sheets. She could see only the top portion of his chest and then the gentle swell of his body was hidden by the sheets, but she knew that he wasn't wearing anything underneath the blankets and her body burned a little at the thought.

She had decided when she had first heard about sex that her first time would be special. She didn't even try to think that she would hold with the nonsense of saving herself for marriage – in this day and age, she knew she would be hard-pressed to make it out of high school a virgin. Her life had taken a different path than she had predicted, and she had spent the first two years of high school without a boyfriend, without any opportunities to defend her virginity.

She had known that she wanted to love the person that she had her first time with – if there wasn't love behind the act, at least the first time, then it wouldn't mean nearly as much. The only problem was; she was having trouble finding somebody to love in that way. Until Puck. Until Noah. Until glee and Leah had united them.

She felt as if she had found in him the part of her that she had been missing. With Noah by her side, she felt more complete, more satisfied, than she had ever felt before. She had thought that she had loved Finn when they sang together and when he had taken her bowling, but now she knew what real love felt like.

In the cemetery that night, when she had been talking to Leah, she had been trying to come up with the right words to say. She thought about everything she would want a daughter to know about her father if he had been the one to pass away, and she spilled everything out of her, laying the world at Leah's grave. She thought about everything she wanted to tell Noah, since he was the one truly listening. She tried to tell him how wonderful she thought he was, and how much she had missed him, but the words weren't enough. She knew what she needed to say, but she was scared to say it. She had been sure that those three words would be the words that would send him back over the edge, and that this time, she might lose him for good.

She had pulled in a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, building up her courage. "I think you should know, Leah, that I love your father," she began nervously. "And I'm going to try to take care of him for you, okay?" she whispered, and waited anxiously for his reaction. She was relieved when he turned to her and buried his face in her hair.

"I love you," she whispered to him, and turned her face to his. She saw the burning in his eyes, and then he closed them and whispered, "I love you, too." When he said the words back to her a glowy sort of warmth spread through her, and she wanted to kiss him, but she knew that now was not the time, nor the place.

She felt him rise from the ground and pull her up next to him. "Let's go home," she whispered, and they walked hand-in-hand back to the truck, her mind racing. She had just told Noah Puckerman that she loved him and he had said it back. There had been so much that had happened between them in the past few months that she knew that the love was real, and that neither one of them took the word or its saying lightly.

When they had begun kissing on her bed, she knew that she wanted him to be her first. That there wasn't going to be anyone as special as Noah Puckerman in her life ever again – especially not in high school, and she didn't want to just get drunk and lose it to some asshole in college. She knew that she loved him and that he honestly loved her, and would be careful with her. He would know how much it meant to her because he _knew_ her.

When she had said the words to him, she had watched his eyes cloud for a brief moment and she was nervous that he would say no, that he would reject her. She wouldn't allow herself to think about how much it would hurt if he told her no. In true Rachel Berry style, it wasn't the only thing that she was worried about. Yes, she had researched sex and what you should do and how it should go, but she was worried that she would do something wrong, that she would ruin the experience. She worried that he didn't think that she was pretty, or attractive, or that her body wasn't the type that he wanted.

She worried about all of it at hyper-speed and then forced herself to stop when she saw the tension release from between his eyes. When he began to lean towards her, she felt excitement begin to fizz through her body, little bubbles of happiness bursting like electric jolts – and that had only been the beginning.

The way he touched her, the way he kissed her, the way he felt on top of her – the slight pressure from his body that was heavy, but not in a bad way. The feeling he put into his kisses, the sweetness he traced onto her with his mouth, the love that he presented for her with all of his actions.

When he softly said her name, drawing her mind out of the ether of his attentions, she looked into his eyes to see the love and hesitation shimmering in them.

"Noah?" she had asked him, hoping that he wasn't about to change his mind. Instead, he had slowly moved inside of her and had whispered, "I love you." She felt pain when she lost her virginity and hissed her breath out through her teeth, but at the same time she was thinking, _ohmygod this feels amazing_.

Nothing had ever felt so right – she felt full, complete. She began to rock against him and whispered the only words she could think of that could accurately convey how she felt. "I love you, I love you," she was whispering, and when he began to move with her and repeated her words to her, she felt her heart swell with love.

He had continued to kiss her in-between showering her with "I love you's" and he seemed as if he were drawn to her mouth, dragging kisses from her neck up to her lips. She could feel her lips swelling from all of the attention they received. He held himself gently off of her, taking care not to be lazy and smother her, and though she could tell that he was _quite_ experienced in this area (either that or just naturally _that_ good) she was receiving an experience unlike any other.

He had made it special. He had been gentle and loving with her; even though she could tell that he was controlling himself. At this thought, she smiled. There would be time to explore moments of lesser control at later dates. But for a first time, it had been perfect. No, there hadn't been rose petals scattered on the bed, there weren't hundreds of white tea candles lit, there wasn't any music (carefully selected of course) on the iHome, but she could not imagine having shared that experience with anyone other than Noah. No one would have fit her so perfectly and understood her so well. No one would have been as gentle and as careful as he had been.

She watched him sleep curled up onto his left side, facing her side of the bed. The entire time she had been reliving the past few hours he hadn't moved at all. He had said that he always had nightmares in the middle of the night, and she noticed that the time she usually received the silent phone calls had come and gone hours ago.

She watched him a little longer, marveling in his peaceful beauty until her eyelids got to be too heavy and she had to let them shut.

When she woke up in the morning she opened her eyes to see him gazing at her. When he registered that she was awake, his face broke into a grin and he leaned down to kiss her.

"Morning breath!" she said, but he ducked in to kiss her again. She decided that she didn't care if he didn't care, and they were eagerly kissing and pressing their bodies against each other when someone knocked on her door.

They froze, and Rachel, ever the actress, called out sleepily, "who is it?" as she tried to make as little noise as possible gathering Noah's clothes and tossing them to him. He had sat up quietly in bed and was attempting to silently dress and (she giggled) calm himself down at the same time.

"It's Daddy, sweetie. Is Noah still here?" she heard from outside the door.

"Oh! Yes," she called back, making a huge production of getting off of the bed. "We must have fallen asleep talking," she said, and then she opened her door to her father. He looked into the room warily, and Rachel could tell that he was trying to remember if she or Noah had been wearing anything different the night before. He must have decided that everything was okay, because he shrugged and asked her if she and Noah wanted breakfast.

"Sure! Let me just wake him up," she responded cheerily, and shut the door. She knew that her fathers trusted and respected Noah, but she was still their little girl. The other times that he had innocently fallen asleep on her bed, they had behaved the exact same way. It wasn't that he had gotten a girl pregnant (by now they knew the whole story behind that) but that he was a boy with hormones in general.

"Good morning," Noah smiled up at her as he "awoke."

"Good morning," she replied, smiling at him. He got off of the bed and gathered her in his arms.

"I could get used to waking up next to you every day," he said to her, and she felt the fire in her heart burn a little harder.

"I could, too," she blushed back at him.

"I've never had a better night's sleep," he said, and then his smile faded a little bit. "I didn't have the nightmare last night, for the first time since she died," he said, and she tried to read all of the emotions in his face. "It was nice, not waking up screaming, but I hope I don't stop dreaming about her all together," he said.

"You won't," she replied softly, and pulled away from him to take his hand in hers. "She'll visit you in your dreams, so that you can have adventures with her and see her – the dreams will be actual dreams, not nightmares. You'll heal," she explained as she opened the door.

Instead of responding, he squeezed her hand, and then kissed her sweetly on the mouth.

"Well! That's _very _interesting..." she heard her dad say, and she blushed even harder as she led Noah down the stairs to the breakfast room.

* * *

Weeks had passed since Noah had outed them to her parents, and they had been the most perfect weeks Rachel could ever remember having. They weren't always happy, as there was a lot of sadness that had been dealt to them recently, but they had each other to lean on, and each other to love.

Noah had leapt back into glee with a renewed fervor, and he and Rachel had choreographed a song for the entire glee club to perform at the end of their set at Regionals. They had drilled everyone on the routine, Noah barking orders and Rachel trying to make sure that everyone hit the right notes. Mr. Schuester watched them from the sidelines with a slight smile on his face.

They had perfected every nuance of the number, and as they closed out "Finale B" Noah pulled Rachel to him and kissed her harder than he had ever kissed her before. There was a brilliant energy that flowed through him as he got to showcase his love for her to everyone, and she loved that he was so happy.

The club regrouped backstage, everyone cheering and hurriedly changing costumes and fixing make-up streaks.

"Great job, you guys!" Mr. Schuester called out, stepping through the kids as they prepared for their final number. "Rachel, Noah?" he questioned and glanced at his watch.

"Places!" Rachel called, and everyone gathered onto the stage. Noah stood on the opposite side of the stage from her; both of them were waiting in the wings. The rest of the group was arranged in rows towards the middle of the stage behind them. The curtain lifted and the group began to sing as Artie began to wail away on the electric guitar.

As the introduction ended, Rachel stepped out onto the stage and began to sing, "I want to break free...." Across the stage, Noah stepped out from the wings and walked to her, singing back to her, "I want to break free..." They reached the center of the stage and turned towards the crowd, trading lines off and on:

I want to break free from your lies  
You're so self satisfied (yeah) I don't need you

As Rachel watched him sing his line, he pushed her lightly on the shoulder and they continued to the opposite side of the stage.

I've got to break free  
God knows, God knows I want to break free

They turned towards each other and pressed their palms together as they turned in a circle and Rachel was forced to think of Shakespeare as they danced and sang together:

I've fallen in love  
I've fallen in love for the first time  
And this time I know it's for real  
I've fallen in love (yeah)

At the breath beat between the end of the "(yeah)" and the beginning of the next line, they kissed quickly and turned towards the front of the stage holding hands.

God knows, God knows I've fallen in love

The rest of the glee members began to move from their positions behind them, effortlessly executing their routine. The remaining girls and guys coupled off, twirling and pushing against each other in an I-love-him, I-love-him-not kind of way. In a nod to a group inside joke, Noah began the next verse, and traded lyrics again with Rachel as the group sang back-up.

It's strange but it's true  
I can't get over the way you love me like you do  
But I have to be sure  
When I walk out that door

At this the pair separated, again walking to other sides of the stage. The group swelled between them, effectively blocking their path to one another as Rachel sang the first line and Noah responded.

Oh how I want to be free baby  
Oh how I want to be free  
Oh how I want to break free!

They reached the instrumental segment of their song and the entire group joined in with dancing, with Mike and Matt even imitating the freestyle dancers from the old Coke commercial. The group dancing effectively kept the two of them from reaching each other until the instrumental section began to wind down. The group interlaced their voices with Rachel and Noah's as they stepped back and formed a pathway in front of them. Rachel and Noah intersected at center stage and began to circle each other as they sang:

But life still goes on  
I can't get used to living without, living without,  
Living without you by my side  
I don't want to live alone (hey)

At this, Rachel began to tug on his arm, trying to get him to look at her again while he sang:

God knows, got to make it on my own

Rachel continued to pull at him until he turned towards her and she sang to him:

So baby can't you see  
I've got to break free

They pulled away from each other and then came back together in a rubber-band like motion. The group had made the decision to break from the traditional fade out ending and had Santana, Kurt, and Brittany take center stage, dancing and singing their hearts out in an ultimate finale as Rachel and Noah danced with each other in the center of the half-shell the group had formed:

I've got to break free  
I want to break free (yeah)

The guitar began to fade out and the dancers and singers moved to the background as Santana and Brittany pirouetted around Kurt while he belted the final line:

I want, I want, I want, I want to break free....

The curtain closed as Brittany and Santana held their final poses around Kurt. Rachel and Noah faded to the background of the group and stared into each others eyes, not daring to move. Around them, ahead of them, in the crowd, in the chorus, and in everyone working backstage at the event she could hear applause, cheers, and whistles.

Mr. Schuester was calling everyone to attention and trying to get them together to bow for a final curtain call, but Rachel could barely hear him. She was lost in Noah's eyes, trying to tell him how proud she was of him. Of them. Of what they had accomplished. Of everything that they had gained.

The curtain rose again and when the lights and the crowd and the cheers and the energy hit her, it was all too much to control and she threw herself forward into Noah's arms. He laughed at her exuberance and held her close to him. She didn't care that they were center stage at a school event. She tilted her head up to meet his and kissed him as if she would never stop kissing him ever again.


	26. Break Free Epilogue

**A/N: To everyone who has read and commented, in some form or fashion, I thank-you. And now, I would like to introduce you to a little something I call the Break Free epilogue...either that or the Beast of Burden prologue. Whichever you desire... let me know what you think!**

**Disclaimer: I would like to own something Glee related for either Christmas or my birthday. Okay? K. Thanks!

* * *

**They had made it through the next two years of high school with ease. They had settled into a routine – they were always Rachel and Noah, or Noah and Rachel, never just Noah and never just Rachel. They arranged their classes together, ate together, sang together, drove together, and practically lived together. After having caught Noah attempting to sneak into the house a dozen different times, Rachel's fathers had conceded that he could sleep there as long as they kept the door open.

She had come to know his mother and his sister well, and helped Noah baby-sit on days when his sister wasn't at a friend's house. He rejoined football and took over as the quarterback. Kurt returned as the star kicker. The glee club grew every year as they claimed more and more titles and popularity. Sue Sylvester fought them harder than ever.

The years had passed and the final exams had been taken. Tonight was graduation and Noah was watching Rachel finish getting ready in her bathroom.

"It's so exciting, isn't it?" she turned to ask him as she secured an earring in place. "Getting to sing the closing song at the ceremony? Just the two of us?"

He smiled back at her – he had convinced Mr. Schue (who had convinced Principal Figgins) to let the two of them close out the graduation ceremony with a duet of "Don't Stop (Believing)." When they concluded the song, the fireworks would be set off behind them.

"It is indeed," he smiled at her, and she crossed the room to give him a peck on the lips. As she turned to go back to the bathroom, he swatted her on the ass. She jumped a little and turned to warn him, "Be good."

She finished getting ready and they proceeded to join the panoply of parents, siblings, extended relatives, and friends at the pre-graduation party that Rachel's dads had thrown for the graduating glee-clubbers.

They chatted and took pictures and ate and drank (well, Noah ate and drank, Rachel only had water, saying she needed to keep her vocal chords clear) and mingled with their friends and their families. Finally, it was time to load into the cars and head over to the football stadium.

Their drive to the school was filled with chatter – they had chosen to drive over with Kurt, Brittany, and Mike. The group was bouncing off the walls of the car and they were laughing and singing as they pulled into the parking lot.

They were herded into the auditorium and separated by letter of the alphabet. Rachel and Noah were soon parted, but both seemed listless without the other by their side.

She felt the ceremony was dragging. Sure, the club's rendition of Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" had been amazing to perform, but she was antsy to walk across the stage. As soon as her name was called she heard loud catcalls from beneath the stage, and she knew where Noah was waiting for her.

After she crossed down the stage and took the obligatory graduation pictures, she ducked under the stairs and ran to him. He swept her up into a long kiss, molding her body to his. She sighed and ran her fingers through his hair – it had grown so much in a few years.

She heard the principal call out the last few names, and knew they needed to get to their places. "Go!" she shout-whispered to him, and he ran towards the other side of the stage.

They performed the song as they had done it for the past few years. Sure, it had been Rachel and Finn's song first, but it hadn't had anything to do with Finn in a long time. As they twirled and sang on the stage, she felt, rather than saw, Noah's nervousness.

As she belted the final lyrics to the song and fell into his lap on the stage, she heard the crowd cheer for them, and was moved by their applause. She stood up, but Noah stayed in the kneeling position he had assumed to catch her. Grinning, he pulled a microphone from the position in front of them and held it to his mouth.

"Rachel Berry," Noah began, and she felt the knots begin to form in her stomach. _Oh, God, Ohmygod,_ she thought as she struggled to keep from hyperventilating. "Will you marry me?"


End file.
